Work – Wolf Suschitzky

Wolf Suschitzky – Work is the beginning of a series of books, which will give insight into the constantly growing holdings of the FOTOHOF archive. The first volume is dedicated to the photographic work of Wolf Suschitzky, whose estate has been stored and catalogued in Salzburg since 2018. The selection of images presented here is not guided by the claim to present this extensive work in its entirety, which spans from the early 1930s to the 21st century. Rather, the selection is based on the theme of “work”, a subject that is omnipresent in the work of Vienna-born Wolf Suschitzky, and thus directs the gaze to certain continuities in a biography punctuated by emigration and exile.

Wolfgang Suschitzky (*1912) grew up in a family more connected to socialism than to its Jewish roots. His father is co-founder of the Anzengruber publishing house and the first social democratic bookstore in Vienna. Wolf Suschitzky received his photographic training at the Höhere Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt. In 1934 he leaves Austria under the influence of Austrofascism. He went first to the Netherlands and one year later to London. Here Wolf Suschitzky worked for magazines such as Picture Post, Illustration and Lilliput and made contact with the British documentary film movement. After the outbreak of the war, he was initially banned from working as an enemy foreigner. From 1942 he worked again as a cameraman and in 1944 he participated in the foundation of the film cooperative DATA. In the post-war period Wolf Suschitzky increasingly made short films and feature films, including classics such as No Resting Place (1951), Ulysses (1967) and Get Carter (1971). In addition to his cinematic work, Wolf Suschitzky also produced an extensive photographic oeuvre that shows him as a cool but never indifferent observer of social conditions. Wolf Suschitzky died in London in 2016 at the age of 104.