Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schönberg visited photographer Hugo Erfurth at his express invitation during his Pierrot tour in 1912. Schönberg seems to have been anxious to obtain portraits of himself at that time; while still in Berlin he went to the studio of Karl Schenker, but he was not very satisfied with the result. He was happier with Hugo Erfurth’s photographs. Erfurth was experimenting intensively with exposing negatives at the time; the surviving gum bichromate prints of Schönberg’s portraits were the result of a sophisticated process which enabled precise control of the tonal values. At the same time, he felt it important not to photograph the sitter in an artificial pose – rather, to produce an authentic character image.