A sheep herder with flock behind him stops for a moment on a country road.

Hauptmann Alfred Böhmer: 1858-1908  

The following overview of German amateur photographer Captain Alfred Böhmer is an extract from the 2018 volume  “Hauptmann Alfred Böhmer. Officer and Photographer” by Zenon Harasym, published by the German Cultural and Social Association in Wroclaw, Poland. (1.)

Alfred Böhmer, German officer, artist photographer, came from Prussian nobility, he began his officer career in the Prussian army by graduating in 1878 from the elite cadet school Lichterfelde Hauptkadettenanstalt in Berlin. For over 12 years he was stationed in Opole as Bezirksoffizier im Landwehrbezirk Oppeln. He was married to Maria Elisabeth von Glasenapp, widow of Hauptman Felix v. Lettow-Vorbeck. His passion was photography, thanks to which he found a place in the history of German artistic photography of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two types of photography, landscape and portrait, were in the circle of his artistic interests. He was a “master of light”, he avoided using special techniques, he remained faithful to “pure” photography, although interpreted in a manner typical of pictorialism. His photographs are characterized by soft drawing and painterly imagination. The reviewers of the time agreed that Böhmer had developed his own style of landscape photography. He was an excellent observer of the landscape, he focused on choosing the right weather conditions, light and shadow and their influence on the way of photographing.

Although his importance for German art photography was already emphasized at the beginning of the 20th century and is also mentioned in some contemporary publications, he has not been widely studied.

1. ISBN: 978-83-939684-4-2