Background
Heinrich Kuehn was born into a wealthy mercantile family, on February 25, 1866, in Dresden, Germany.
Heinrich Kuehn was born into a wealthy mercantile family, on February 25, 1866, in Dresden, Germany.
Heinrich Kühn studied medicine in Innsbruck around 1880, after which he became completely engrossed in photography in 1888.
In 1888, after completing his studies in science and medicine, Heinrich Kühn moved to Innsbruck, Austria. In 1896, he joined the Wiener Camera-Klub, where he met fellow pictorialists Hugo Henneberg and Hans Watzek. This trio soon formed the Trifolium (Kleeblatt) and added a symbolic three-leaf clover to their individual prints. They traveled together to Germany, Italy, and Holland, and presented an exhibition of their work in Vienna in the summer of 1897. The same year, Kuehn was elected to London’s prestigious Linked Ring Brotherhood.
Kuehn paid attention to modern art and in 1898 exhibited with the painters of the Munich Secession, whose subjects and compositions he admired. Seven years later, he built a summer house in Birgitz bei Innsbruck that was designed by Josef Hoffmann, the founder of the Wiener Werkstatte; the gable above the front door was carved with the words "Heil dir Sonne — Heil dir Licht" (Bless the Sun — Bless the Light). He opened a portrait studio in Innsbruck in 1906, and shortly thereafter experimented with the new Autochrome process, producing diffused color images on glass plates.
Kuehn organized the important Dresden photography exhibition of 1908, about the time he began moving away from pictorial imagery and making photogravures. In 1914, he opened a photography school in Innsbruck, which he ran for only about a year. Five years later, reduced finances forced him to sell his city house, close his studio, and move to Birgitz, where he remained the rest of his life.
Kuehn exhibited his work at major European photography exhibitions from 1895 to 1905, in Berlin, Brussels, Dresden, Glasgow, Hamburg, London, Paris, and Vienna. In this country, his photographs were included in the 1907 show of Austrian and German work at the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and the 1910 International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo.
Reproductions of Kuehn’s pictorial work appeared regularly in the photographic press at the same time. London’s Photograms of the Year included it in 1896 and 1897. Alfred Stieglitz featured his pictures when he was editor of both Camera Notes and Camera Work; while the first periodical presented halftones of Kuehn’s pictures (including a self-portrait), the second one contained mostly rich photogravures — sixteen of them between 1906 and 1911. In 1902, Fritz Matthies-Masuren wrote a book on the gum-bichromate work of the Trifolium, with Kuehn’s work prominent.
Kuehn himself wrote many articles and books on photography. By 1896, he was contributing to German magazines such as Wiener Photographische Blätter, and later to Photographische Rundschau. During the 1920s and 1930s, he published many technical articles in the German annual Das Deutsche Lichtbild. His own books appeared in 1921 and 1926: Technik der Lichtbildnerei and Zur Photographischen Technik. By this time, he had codified his thinking into a theory he termed "Syngraphie", which suggested that highlight and shadow areas be printed separately, in order to approximate the normal visual experience. Heinrich Kuehn died of gastro-intestinal poisoning and organ failure in Birgitz, Austria, on September 14, 1944.
Woman at a Mirror
Stilleben mit Blumen
Miss Mary and Edeltrude Lying in the Grass
Crépuscule
The Kuhn Children, Tyrol
The Artist’s Umbrella
Violets
Hans with Bureau
Self-portrait
Toilette du matin (Mary Warner)
Wanderer
Miss Mary and Edeltrude at the Hill Crest
Mary Warner à contre-jour
Study in Tonal Values III (Mary Warner)
Miss Mary
Meine Diana
Lady before a mirror
Rückenakt
Alfred Stieglitz
Nude on Back
Picnic On a Hill
Sicilianische Brigg, Austria
In 1896, Heinrich joined the Wiener Camera-Klub. A year later, Kuehn was elected to London’s prestigious Linked Ring Brotherhood.