The idea is obvious and hardly surprising: after the exhibition format and the archive, the international art world is now increasingly focusing on the library. Whether as repositories of knowledge, organising systems or meta-collections of visual-aesthetic resources, libraries have always functioned as cultural powerhouses and exert their own, sometimes mesmerising attraction. Our Western way of thinking is closely linked to them. Of course, with the triumph of digitalisation and the implosion of the Gutenberg galaxy, the space of knowledge has now shifted not only metaphorically, but also physically: the fluid and sensually slipping structure that largely dominates our digitally influenced communication and information culture finds an almost archaic echo in collections that have survived decades and centuries in library form. In other words, public and private libraries “play for time” in their persistence. Like counterweights, they stand up to any digital zeitgeist and, in their very physicality, lay claim to their own space of validity, which comes across as canonical and can be reviewed and questioned on an ongoing basis. This is probably what makes libraries so attractive to contemporary curators, researchers, and artists.

As far as photography is concerned, the medium has been linked to the idea of libraries from the very beginning. It is worth remembering that William Henry Fox-Talbot included an image entitled “A Scene in a Library” as one of his first photographs in his photobook The Pencil of Nature. Carol Armstrong then titled her stupendous essay on the early days of photography, which was published in 1998, Scenes in a Library. Her photo-historical investigation has certainly made it clear how strongly bibliophilic the first century of photography was. This applied both to the specific knowledge around photography, which was shared through textual treatises and textbooks about printed works, and extended to the photographic images themselves, which were also distributed worldwide in book form via albums and editions.

In the 20th century, a certain two-track approach can also be observed. One of the revolutionary demands of Neues Sehen (New Vision) and Bauhaus photography, which helped to establish the photobook in its modernist formulation, was: “Stop Reading! Look!” [¹] However, from the 1940s onwards, with the establishment of the autonomous photobook, one that functions as a distinct and complete work of art, independent of a photographer’s portfolio or the context of an exhibition,  the function of sharing specialised knowledge by no means became obsolete. On the contrary, from then on, text and image, knowledge and visual aesthetics were passed on equally in the medium of books and periodicals when it came to photography. In specialised libraries on photography, this dual aspect becomes even more apparent. At least for the era of the West German Federal Republic up to reunification, we can say with certainty that the important book collections on photography were all built up in an encyclopaedic spirit. Today, they form the basis of key public libraries—whether Otto Stenger in Cologne, Otto Steinert in Essen, Karl Steinorth in Berlin, or Rolf H. Krauss in Marburg—it is thanks to that handful of photographers, private scholars, and connoisseurs of photography that photo-historical research in Germany can draw on bibliographical resources. Even a figure such as Manfred Heiting, who realigned the idea of collecting photobooks to vintage, would be inconceivable without the aforementioned predecessors.

In 2021, the PhotoBookMuseum was able to acquire Renate and L. Fritz Gruber’s working library of around 5,000 photo volumes. As curator of the legendary picture show Bilderschauen at the world’s leading photography trade fair Photokina in Cologne, L. Fritz Gruber (1908-2005) was the key figure in European post-war photography for decades. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne houses the internationally renowned photographic collection of this gifted networker and author. Now we see ourselves confronted with the time-consuming scientific reappraisal of his library and, as it were, with a radically new catalogue of questions: To what extent, for example, did Gruber draw his profound knowledge from publications? To what extent did he choose photographic positions for picture shows, even images from photobooks and periodicals? To what extent does it reflect his preferences and friendly contacts in the books, which–from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, from Weegee to William Klein, from Berenice Abbott to Gisèle Freund–are often donations with personal dedications? How did he communicate about, with, and through photobooks? And last but not least: to what extent did he use his library to build up his important photo collection?

Such questions determine our reconstructive attempt to uncover the spectacular Gruber matrix in a working library. It has already become clear to us that a photobook library always reveals a specific thought and action structure of those who have compiled it.

The museum intends to acquire, research, and present further collections of international significance. Following in the spirit of Renate and L. Fritz Gruber, the Gruber Library will also continue to grow. A collection in which the Grubers’ idea of democracy is expressed through photography: a juxtaposition and coexistence of positions, perspectives, and different points of view.

For the book and photography lovers L. Fritz and Renate Gruber, the publications in the library were an indispensable resource for garnering information on the medium and the work of various photographers. For them, the library was nothing less than a universe of photography. Just as the book is at the core of the ever-expanding universe of photography for The PhotoBookMuseum.

Markus Schaden
Director of The PhotoBookMuseum, Cologne.

¹ The phrase “Stop Reading! Look!” is from a 1928 essay by the German graphic designer Johannes Molzahn and was a motto he envisioned for an educational future driven by visual understanding over text. While not a direct Bauhaus manifesto, it reflects ideas promoted by Bauhaus figures like László Moholy-Nagy who also predicted photography’s rise as a dominant visual language. The phrase emphasises the shift towards a new, universally accessible form of communication through photography, a concept explored in the book Stop Reading! Look!: Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book (2015) by Pepper Stetler.