UMBO is considered the inventor of the image of the New Woman, the new image of the street, and photographic reportage per se. UMBO was a young artist plagued by self-doubt who became famous as a photographer almost overnight, and hence participated in all important avant-garde exhibitions of his time. This publication, which presents a selection of 200 works and numerous documents, is essentially based on UMBO’s estate. More than 600 photographs and extensive source material form the background. The material, supplemented by selected press releases, yields a highly complex and dazzling artist biography of the 20th century, full of discontinuities, fractures, and unanswered questions. It revolves around the failure of the avant-garde and the difficulty following their successes after the Second World War. UMBO. Photographer offers the opportunity to re-examine the many projections associated with the name UMBO, more than two decades after the first retrospective.
