Alfons Walde as nude artist and photographer

Close to everyday life, clear as well as always intense and lively: Alfons Walde's sports, milieu and landscape views are as popular as they are sought after. His enthusiasm for photography, on the other hand, is hardly known. His legacy contains an archive that has hardly been seen until today, opening up undreamt-of insights into the sensual sides of his art.
"SchauLust", with a selection of around 130 pictures from the 1920s to 1940s - supplemented by drawings and paintings - is the first publication to focus on Alfons Walde's photographic oeuvre. The focus is on his view of the female nude, which he repeatedly varied in his studies - classical poses alternate with playful and exuberant scenes. Here Walde shows himself to be a passionate voyeur who, when taking photographs, is always concerned with the change of gaze, with the play of prestige and posing. This intimate relationship between the painter and his muses is reflected in his photographs and transports the viewer into a time of departure in which sensuality and joie de vivre were celebrated.
Comparisons with selected drawings and paintings show that color film and Leica served as photographic sketchbooks for Waldes paintings. However, it is also about the pleasurable looking itself - the photographs are not only artistic preliminary studies, but also erotic preludes.