Günter Rössler

There’s a lot written about the differences between East and West Germany and the topic of nudity is not left out. The implicitness with which someone from the east viewed nudity in private spaces, would never be obtained by someone from the west. This is most obvious in nude photography.  Western nude photography from the 50’s onward is steeped in an extreme abstraction, with bodies stylized as graphical compositions, devoid of any eroticism.   “The nude is reduced to characteristic, basic shapes, non-specific symbols of the female body until the subject matter is simply presented as a building block to the pictorial composition,” said Otto Steinert, 1954. “The cropped images devoid of heads… further remove the sphere of all personal and erotic imagination.”
If you simply glance at the photographs of the Leipziger photographer, Günter Rössler (*1926), they appear as the antithesis to the dictum of Essen’s famous photography professors. With complete sobriety, Rössler presents homage to sensuality, and desires for his audience not only an aesthetic sensitivity, but also a fair amount of emotionalism.He aims for more than the formal play of shadow but not for provocation, as Helmut Newton or Mapplethorpe did. His approach focuses on the classical nude through and through and refuses to objectify the models completely. Instead, he integrates their individuality into the pictures, which  long agowon him a name in the field. The results are convincing as passionate appraisals of the female body and stops on the search for beauty and youth. 

Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch