Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

not titled [Steel pillar, ship's pulley and rope] c.1929
gelatin silver photograph
image 35.1 (h) x 27.4 (w) cm
Gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc., New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2006.133

Bruehl had a life-long interest in boats and sailing. Many of the images from the late 1920s are of scenes found by the water, including jetties, for example, and views of boats at anchor. A mechanical engineer, Bruehl’s love of structures is also reflected in the images he made of boat hardware: later in life he would patent a number of inventions for navigation equipment. When they could, Anton and his brother Martin and their families sailed off Connecticut in Anton’s ketch Yarra.

Images such as this with their dynamic compositions and extreme viewpoints were no doubt the sort of images chosen for the influential exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart in May-June 1929. Ten of Bruehl’s images were included in a show which had a strong American contingent including Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott and Paul Outerbridge. It was the first major showing in Europe of modern American photography.