DISTURBED LANDSCAPES

by Steve Dougherty

In 1964, the editors of Quick, the groundbreaking German photo news magazine, published the work of a dozen of its leading contributors. Each of the photo journalists included in the volume, Report Der Reporter, were invited to discuss their art in an accompanying essay. Among the photographers highlighted was Peter Bock-Schroeder, who vividly chronicled life on the far-flung fringes of the post war world in his journeys as a foreign correspondent for Stern and Revue magazines, as well as Quick. Bock-Schroeder's wide-ranging travels took him from the palace of the exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, Netherlands, to remote and impoverised villages of native peoples in the jungles of Peru and the Alaskan tundra. Bock-Schroeder's camera captured some of the last moments in the disappearing lives of salmon fishermen in Oregon, the indigenous peoples of Alaska, Bolivia and Peru and the displaced peasants of Soviet Russia. In regions as distant from one another as the war-ravaged cities of his own Germany, the remote mining towns of Bolivia and the devastated former battleground at Stalingrad, Bock-Schroeder chronicled worlds in collision. The scenes he framed in his camera lens were landscapes, he wrote. But they were not the pretty pictures of "willows by the river or beeches in the fog" that he was after, but rather the landscapes of a world violently "disturbed" by man.

The Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate

Jans Bock-Schroeder, son of Peter Bock-Schroeder and director of the Peter Bock-Schroeder estate is living in Paris. His great challenge is to oversee a lifetime of work produced by his father. With 6,000 negatives and 1,000 vintage prints. He started to work on the archive in 2004. In 2006 he was offered a book deal with a German publishing house. "They wanted to publish a monograph about my father's work. It was tempting, but I rejected the deal. The idea to pack all of his photographs into one 'monster' book didn't feel right." Instead, The Estate is focusing on e-books, which will be available FREE from their website in 2012.

Prints and Editions

The Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate produces modern/estate prints from the original negatives. The sizes are 30cm x 30cm and 50cm x 50cm. All prints are produced analogue. Ten prints per negative. The photographs are stamped on the back with Peter Bock-Schroeder's original copyright stamp, and the Peter Bock-Schroeder Estate stamp. For authenticity reasons, all prints are signed by Jans Bock Schroeder with the print date and edition number.

Going Mobile

The Peter Bock-Schroeder Web APP will give you a ‘magazine-esque’ feel. The App is designed to best fit the screen size of all mobile devices. Available in April 2012.