Source:
courtesy of Photography Department, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.
For the first time ever, we are publishing here as a comprehensive series some of the 268 photographs Germaine Krulltook in Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Banteay Srei and other Angkorian temples in 1960 or 1962, when she was living in Bangkok but was about to leave Southeast Asia, where she has settled in 1945.
We have found in Germaine Krull’s posthumous autobiography, La vie mène la danse (pp 380 – 381), the relation of her visit to Angkor in 1960 or 1962:
“J’avais l’idée de faire venir Berthe [sa soeur cadette] a Bangkok […] Je lui ai fait voir Bangkok, mes amis et le reste, je l’ai emmenée a Chengmai et au bord de la mer, et enfin je suis partie avec elle en Europe via Hong Kong et Angkor Vat.
“C’était tres beau et elle a beaucoup aimé Angkor Vat. Il m’a fallu plusieurs jours avant d’entrer dans le Bayon car les énormes tetes, plus grandes que nature, me faisaient peur. Aussi me suis-je arrangée pour né pas me trouver seule dans le Bayon. J’ai beaucoup aimé la forêt, les grands arbres qui doucement mangeaient les sculptures. Les Français travaillaient dur pour contrer la nature, mais les pierres disparaissaient toujours un peu plus.
“Nous sommes aussi allées à Banteay Srey, ce temple extraordinaire que Malraux avait découvert, où il y a des bas-reliefs en pierre rose qui produisent un effet tout à fait inattendu. Tout a été reconstruit et les temples sont comme neufs. L´enceinte est très belle, avec des frontons sculptés de trois mètres de haut et des entrées ornées de sculptures de dimensions plus modestes. Le tout a l´air d´un petit bijou, et comme le site est un peu en dehors du chemin des touristes, il n´est pas très visité et reste en sommeil.
“À Angkor Vat, il y a une série de temples grandioses entourés d´étangs. Tout est énorme: de l´entrée au temple, il faut marcher un demi-kilomètre, puis monter un long escalier avec beaucoup de marches, avant d’arriver au sommet où est installé le grand bouddha. Une immense galerie court autour du temple en contrebas, entièrement sculptée, un travail extrêmement fin et soigné; les murs et les escaliers sont pleins de sculptures de toutes sortes. Je n´ai pas été tellement enchantée par ce temple, pourtant très beau et en excellent état. Les têtes de Angkor Thom, du Bayon, me sont plus proches. Nous avons aussi vu, au clair de lune, des danseuses cambodgiennes. C’était féérique! L’hôtel, très confortable, était juste à côté d’Angkor Vat. ce qui nous permettait de voir parfois le temple la nuit, à la lumiere de la lune. J’étais, comme Berthe. envoûtée par cette ambiance du passé.
“Nous sommes parties de Phnom Penh à Calcutta pour rejoindre le sud des Indes. Calcutta, cette ville qui né ressemble a rien: c’est une ville qui veut être une ville et qui né l’est pas. Partout des mendiants et des gens affamés, partout la misère. J’ai vu pour la première fois la vraie misère de la faim.”
[“I had the idea of bringing Berthe [her younger sister] to Bangkok […] I showed her Bangkok, my friends and the rest, I took her to Chengmai and to the seaside, and finally I left with her for Europe via Hong Kong and Angkor Wat.
“It was very beautiful and she really liked Angkor Wat. It took me several days to enter the Bayon because the huge heads, larger than life, frightened me. So I managed not to being alone in the Bayon. I really liked the forest, the tall trees that gently ate the sculptures. The French worked hard to counter nature, but the stones always disappeared a little more.
“We also went to Banteay Srey, this extraordinary temple that Malraux had discovered, where there are bas-reliefs in pink stone creating a completely unexpected effect. Everything has been rebuilt and the temples are like new. The enclosure is really beautiful, with sculpted pediments three meters high and entrances adorned with sculptures of more modest dimensions. The whole thing looks like a little gem, and as the site is a little out of the way of tourists, it is not very visited and remains dormant.
“In Angkor Wat, there is a series of grandiose temples surrounded by ponds. Everything is huge: from the entrance to the temple, you have to walk half a kilometer, then climb a long staircase with many steps, before get to the top where the big buddha is installed. A huge gallery runs around the temple below, fully carved, extremely fine and careful workmanship, the walls and stairs are full of carvings of all kinds. I was not so much enchanted by this temple, yet very beautiful and in excellent condition. The heads of Angkor Thom, of Bayon, are closer to me. We also saw, in the moonlight, Cambodian dancers. It was magical! The hotel, very comfortable, was right next to Angkor Wat, which allowed us to sometimes see the temple at night, in the moonlight. I was, like Berthe, bewitched by this atmospheric past.
“We left from Phnom Penh to Calcutta to reach South India. Calcutta, a city which looks like nothing: it is a city which wants to be a city and which is not. Everywhere beggars and people starving, misery everywhere. I saw for the first time the real misery of hunger.”
Remarks:
The fact that the author waited for her younger sister to join her before going to Angkor, a few months after their mother´s passing away, once again illustrates the emotional portence of a visit to the Khmer temples.
Although we do not know how long GK and her sister stayed in Siem Reap, she explored the temples well beyond the usual touristic circuit, documenting lesser known monuments at that time, such as Bakong, Preah Khan, Banteay Samrei, Preah Pithu, Phimeanakas, Baphuon, Preah Palilay, Chau Sey Tevoda, Pre Rup, and of course Banteay Srei.
As for Banteay Srei’s “discovery” by André Malraux, it is to be assumed that the photographer has taken for granted the writer-thief’s bragging about his punishable (and punished) adventures there. And if the temple seemed ¨like new¨ to her, the reason is that it had been recently renovated by the EFEO teams under Henri Marchal´s supervision.
Germaine Krull’s interest in Khmer art developed when she was traveling across Thailand, visiting Lopburi and Sukhotai. As for traditional and classical dance, she had been drawn to female dancers for a long time and later on, during her stay in Tibet, she photographed elegant Tibetan dancers with much gusto.
Germaine Krull, Tibetan Dancers, circa 1968
Germaine Krull, Tibetan Dancers, circa 1968
The hotel here mentioned was L’Auberge des temples, an elegant bungalow built by the French administration to host EFEO guests and wealthy tourists, and kept as a high-end hotel after the Independence. On Oct. 121979, The New York Times reported the ordeal of a Cambodian refugee in Thailand: “Mr. Dith Pran was born in Siem Reap Province and went through high school there. He learned French in the classroom and English at home on his own. After high school, in 1960, he got a job as an interpreter for the United States Military Assistance Group then in Cambodia. When Cambodia broke relations with Washington in 1963, Mr. Dith Pran worked as an interpreter for the British film crew that was producing “Lord Jim” with Peter O’Toole. After that, he became a receptionist at Cambodia’s best‐known tourist hotel, Auberge Royale des Temples, situated just opposite the main entrance to the famed Angkor temple complex. The hotel is now destroyed, partly by bombardment during the 1970‐75 war, but mostly by the Pol Pot régime, which dismantled it and used the bricks and stones of the walls to build irrigation works.”
About GK’s Style
In Frieze magazine (17 Nov 2015), Ulf Erdmann Ziegler wrote: “We know she planned to sell her negatives in 1937, but not where they ended up. As a consequence, gaining an overview of her work involves studying French magazines which used her pictures, like Varieté, Bifur, Vu, Jazz, consulting out-of-print monographs in libraries, and seeking out the ’30s detective novels that she illustrated. There are also her excellent handmade enlargements that served as masters for printing. The Folkwang Museum, which holds her estate, remains the most important source; Kim Sichel’s catalogue Germaine Krull – Avantgarde als Abenteuer, published by the Folkwang in 1999, was the first in-depth appraisal of her life and work.
In 1967, Krull returned to Paris for a short time. With the help of her old friend André Malraux, then France’s minister of culture, she was given a retrospective at the Musée du Cinéma. Before this, people wondered why Walter Benjamin had mentioned ‘Germaine Krull’ in his Short History of Photography (1931) as an example of photography driven by scientific interests. Now the answer gradually came to light. Krull’s rediscovery is a long story, and a definitive assessment of her work has yet to be made. Even printing a new edition of her chef d’oeuvre proved near impossible. As early as 1976, Ann and Jürgen Wilde acquired the rights for a reprint of Métal from the photographer her-self. But it was not until 2003, with advances in technology, that they found a printer in Belgium who was able to create a convincing facsimile of the original portfolio at a reasonable price. And this facsimile itself is now a collector’s item. This means that one still meets people who are familiar with the work of Walker Evans, or August Sander, but who know Krull only by hearsay.
The majority of her estate, held by the Folkwang, is from her later work, showing temples and figures in Thailand, India, Nepal and Tibet [Cambodia is curiously omitted here] – a treasure that would be best appreciated by ethnological specialists. And perhaps they should take a look. The pictures are not as conventional as people claim because, in typical Krull style, they often show more than just the figure, including a bit of the surroundings, the dusty light – producing pictures that seem extraordinarily alive. With this continuity of subject matter, however, her work did lose its characteristic pictorial ‘flicker’. Whereas previously, Krull always asked herself what she was seeing, now she believed what she was seeing.”
Captions
The Museum Folkwang established for us a list of all gelatin silver prints (Silbergelatineabzug) related to Angkor Wat and other Khmer temples in Cambodia, some 268 photographs. email hidden; JavaScript is required. Note that original captions were written in French, as German-Poland-born Germaine Krull wrote and spoke French fluently.
We are publishing here 24 of those, with the Museum’s captions and, in [ ], the clarifications-corrections researcher Olivier Cunin has been kind enough to share with us. In { }, additions by Angkor Database:
This publication was made possible thanks to Ms. Petra Steinhardt, Head of Photography Department at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. Our thanks also go to Dr. Gridthiya Gaweewong, Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, and to Curators Ms. Anna-Catharina Gebbers and Ms. Rinrada Na Chiangmai.
ADB Input: This kind of publication is highly valued by researchers and APSARA officials still trying to figure out the location and the state of Khmer artworks before looting became endemic in the mid-1960s and 1970s.
Germaine Luise Krull (20 November 1897, Posen-Wilda (then in Germany, now Poznan, Poland) – 31 July 1985, Wetzlar, Germany) was an avant-garde photographer, political activist, and avid traveler who beautifully captured Khmer temples in the 1960s before settling for a while in Tibet in her ongoing search for spirituality and a better world.
A free-thinker who questioned the patriarcal order — with the approval of her own father — from a young age, she attended the the Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie, a photography school in Munich, with the influence of Frank Eugene’s teaching of pictorialism, and opened her own studio there in 1918, portraying prominent artists such as Kurt Eisner, Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Pollock, and Max Horkheimer.
Inclined to communist activism, she was harceled by police in Germany and Austria, traveled to Bolshevik Russia in 1921 with lover Samuel Levit, was imprisoned and expelled from there. She moved to Berlin, — where she created a series of nude photos with a quite explicit lesbian message — Amsterdam — where she met filmmaker Joris Ivens, with whom she contracted later a marriage of convenience — and Paris, where her ‘modernist’ style was remarked by surrealist circles and where she befriended artists such as photographers Man Ray ans André Kertész, artists Sonia and Robert Delaunay, and writers Colette, André Gide, Jean Cocteau or André Malraux. In her much-acclaimed portfolio Métal (1928), a 64 black-and-white dramatic shots in which she captured metallic architectural structures, “the essentially masculine subject of the industrial landscape”, in particular the Eiffel Tower. It is there that she portrayed writer and traveler Titayna with her Buddha head.
Living in Monte-Carlo in 1935 – 1940, Germaine Krull kept contributing to major photo magazines, travel and fiction books. Fleeing collaborationist France, she escaped to Brazil, French Equatorial Africa, Algeria, and actively contributed to the Resistance, capturing military action in France in 1944 – 1945. Her proximity to Malraux — they were working on a book about the sculptural and architectural art of Southeast Asia that never materialized — led to her involvement with the Gaullist movement. In her autobiography, she reported that the last time she saw Malraux in Paris — more precisely at La Lanterne, Malraux’s residence in Versailles –, “j’ai laissé plus de 1500 photos chez André, et elles y sont toujours!” [I left more than 1,500 photos at André’s, and they’re still there!] [1]. She went to Southeast Asia, first Laos, then Thailand and Cambodia in 1946 as a war correspondent and a representative of the French Resistance, and was spotted as such by the American CIA, for instance in this confidential dispatch.
With famous designer Jim Thompson, she decided to remodel and refurbish the derelict Oriental Hotel in Bangkok — which was to become the Mandarin Oriental –, and in spite of many disagreements with Thompson remained its co-owner until 1966. She designed the now iconic Bamboo Bar, and slowly but surely led the hotel to grow from the Japanese Officers Club it had been turned into during World War II, and then to a transit hospitality center for anti-fascist activists, to a high-end establishment. [Read a complete and richly illustrated saga of the hotel by Wild’n’Free Diary.]
With Jim Thompson in front of the Oriental Hotel, c. 1950
With Jim Thompson in front of the Oriental Hotel, c. 1950
The Mandarin Oriental lobby in 2023 (photo Forbes)
The Mandarin Oriental lobby in 2023 (photo Forbes)
Meanwhile, she collaborated to three photo and text books about Thailand, and traveled frequentely to Angkor, photographying then lesser-known temples such as Pre Rup or Preah Khan.268 of these remarkable documents are kept at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, within her archives donated by her heirs. Angkor Database wishes to make more accessible Krull’s unique contribution to the photographic documentation of Angkor Wat and other Khmer Temples.
Later on, Germaine Krull went briefly back to Paris, then moved to North India, where she embraced the Sakya teaching of Tibetan Buddhism. Her late work reflects her lifelong interest in Buddhist art and dance, both themes that had inspired her so profundly in Angkor. Her final major photographic publication was the 1968 book Tibetans in India, including a portrait of the Dalai Lama.
[1] Germaine Krull, La vie mene la danse, ed. Francoise Denoyelle, Textuel, Paris 2015 and 2019 [out of print], p 397. The editor added that she asked Madeleine Malraux (7 April 1914, Toulouse – 10 January 2014, Paris) about these photographs in 2001, but the pianist and concertist who had been Malraux’s companion from 1944 to 1966 said she had no idea of this collection’s whereabouts.
Main publications:Métal, Paris: Librairie des arts décoratifs, 1928. (New facsimile edition published in 2003 by Ann and Jürgen Wilde, Köln.) | 100 x Paris, Berlin-Westend: Verlag der Reihe, 1929. | Études de Nu, Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, 1930. | with Raúl Lino and Ruy Ribeiro Couto, Uma Cidade Antiga do Brasil, Ouro Preto, Lisboa: Edições Atlântico, 1943.| Chiengmai, Bangkok: Assumption Printing Press, 1955. | with Dorothea Melchers, Bangkok: Siam’s City of Angels, London: R. Hale, 1964. | with Dorothea Melchers, Tales from Siam, London: R. Hale, 1966. | Tibetans in India, Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1968. | Posthumous autobiography: La Vita Conduce la Danza, Firenze: Filippo Giunti, 1992. ISBN88−09−20219−8 (La vie mène la danse or “Life Leads the Dance”, translated into Italian by Giovanna Chiti.); La vie mène la danse (L’écriture photographique), ed. Francoise Denoyelle,Paris : Textuel editions, 2015. ISBN978−2−84597−522−4.
Germaine Krull Autobiography (Textuel, Paris 2019)
Germaine Krull Autobiography (Textuel, Paris 2019)
Among Germaine Krull’s contributions to literary work: Bucovich, Mario von, Paris, New York: Random House, 1930. | Colette. La Chatte, Paris: B. Grasset, 1930. | Nerval, Gérard de, and Germaine Krull, Le Valois, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1930. | Claude Farrère, La Route Paris-Biarritz, Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1931. | Morand, Paul, and Germaine Krull, Route de Paris à la Méditerranée, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1931. | Simenon, Georges, and Germaine Krull, La Folle d’Itteville, Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1931. | André Suarès, Marseille, Paris: Librairie Plon, 1935. | Vailland, Roger, La Bataille d’Alsace (Novembre-Décembre 1944), Paris: Jacques Haumont, 1945.
Films:Six pour dix francs (France, 1930) | Il partit pour un long voyage (France, 1932)
References: MacOrlan, Pierre, Germaine Krull: Photographes Nouveaux, Paris: Gallimard, 1931. | Rosenblum, Naomi, A History of Women Photographers, 2nd edition, New York: Abbeville Press, 2000. ISBN0−7892−0658−7. | Baker, Kenneth. “Germaine Krull’s Radical Vision / Photographer’s Work Featured at SFMOMA”, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 April 2000. | “Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919 – 1939”, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1999. ISBN84−8026−125−0. | Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Germaine Krull: Fotografien 1922 – 1966, Köln: Rheinland-Verlag, 1977. ISBN3−7927−0364−5. | Bouqueret, Christian, and Moutashar, Michèle, Germaine Krull: Photographie 1924 – 1936, Arles: Musée Réattu, 1988. | Sichel, Kim, From Icon to Irony: German and American Industrial Photography, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. ISBN1−881450−06−6.; Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity, The MIT Press, 1999, ISBN0−262−19401−5.; “Germaine Krull and L’Amitié Noire: World War II and French Colonialist Film”, in Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place, ed. Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson, London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN0−415−27495−8.; “Germaine Krull à Monte-Carlo [Germaine Krull: the Monte Carlo Years]”, Montréal: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, 2006, ISBN2−89192−306−5. | Kosta, Barbara. “She was a Camera”, Women’s Review of Books, volume 17, issue 7, pages 9 – 10, April 2000. | Specker, Heidi, Bangkok — Heidi Specker Germaine Krull im Sprengel-Museum Hannover, 9. Oktober 2005 bis 25. Juni 2006. Zülpich: Albert-Renger-Patzsch-Archiv, 2005. ISBN3−00−017658−6. | Bertolotti, Alessandro, Books of Nudes, New York: Abrams, 2007. ISBN978−0−8109−9444−7. | Dumas, Marie Hélène. Lumières d’Exil, Paris: Gallimard and Éditions Joëlle Losfeld, 2009. ISBN978−2−07−078770−8. (French novelization of Germaine Krull’s life.) | Roth, Andrew, ed., The Open Book: a History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present, Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Center, 2004. | “Portrait of Hedonist with Glasses Half Empty”, The Gazette (Montréal), 30 December 2006. | Frizot, Michel, Germaine Krull, Paris : Hazan editions, 2015. ISBN978−2−7541−0816−4. (Catalog of “Germaine Krull (1897−1985)”, Jeu de Paume Museum Exhibition, 2015).
Latest and Upcoming Exhibitions:“Germaine Krull– The Return Of An Avant-Gardist”, The Jim Thompson Art Centre & The Goethe Institute, Bangkok, June 2022. | “Germaine Krull and Southeast Asia”, Bangkok, September 2023.
Portrait by Hans Blaser, Berlin, 1922 (Folkwang Museum, Dresden, Germany)
Portrait by Hans Blaser, Berlin, 1922 (Folkwang Museum, Dresden, Germany)
In Cambodia, Yama (kh យមរាជ) is theking of the Dead, son of Surya reigning over the subterranean world. According to ethnologist Ang Choulean, Vraḥ Yamarāj or ‘King Yama’ is "the God closest to the Khmers", the one to these days invoked in "annual Pchum Ben (Fortnight of the Dead) and mortuary rituals. Yama astride his buffalo looms large in Angkorian lintels across the centuries as the god of death and justice and as the subject in imprecations aimed at transgressors and temple vandals." Prof. Ang Choulean remarked that in Cambodia, Yama's representations and altars, originally facing south like in Indian traditions, started to be oriented in the northeast direction from the 13th-14th centuries, emphasizing the promise of reincarnation over physical death.
