Umbo. Photographer

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.