August Kotzsch: Photography

August Kotzsch, the son of a Loschwitz winegrower, was the first commercial photographer in Loschwitz from 1861. He not only documented the development of the village from a wine-growing village to a Dresden villa suburb, but also worked as a photographic local chronicler. Portraits of the residents of Loschwitz were taken in his improvised studio in the courtyard of his estate. He captured village life and work in idyllic genre scenes. While these pictures are rather picturesque in character and are thematically and artistically rooted in late Romanticism, August Kotzsch's pictorial language also points the way to modernism. This manifests itself above all in his nature studies, which were his main interest as a photographer. Not least the still lifes arranged with the produce of his garden make Kotzsch a forerunner of New Objectivity photography in retrospect.

In the 1870s and 1880s, August Kotzsch was very successful with his "studies from nature", which he offered as artistic model sheets. He took part in the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 and in the annual exhibition of the Société française de Photographie in Paris in 1874. By co-operating with various publishers, he was able to distribute the study sheets both nationally and internationally.