Ottomar Anschütz’s Animal Photography through the Lens of Darwinism

Along with Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Ansch€utz was one of the most important practitioners of late nineteenthcentury chronophotography. Although his work remains woefully overlooked, Ansch€utz invented the electric Schnellseher (Electrotachyscope) and thus significantly contributed to the technical history of cinematography. A considerable part of his photographic work is devoted to the depiction of animals, including around 1,500 photographs housed in the archive of Berlin University of the Arts. When Ansch€utz presented his first instantaneous photographs in 1883-4 in Berlin, the technological advancement of his images was striking in contrast to Muybridge’s early photography from 1878-79. While Muybridge depicts the horse and rider as dark silhouettes on the picture plane, in Ansch€utz’s images the bodily movement and anatomy appear in full clarity and splendor. Many of his contemporaries within the arts and sciences praised the strong impression his lively images exuded. This became possible through a new precision of depiction—the use of extremely light-sensitive gelatin dry plates in combination with Ansch€utz’s invention of the rouleau-shutter, which he located directly in front of the photographic plate. Compared to his contemporaries’ photographs, Ottomar Ansch€utz’s images generate the illusion of spatial freedom, which leaps over to the depicted object. Instead of a narrow stage and a black background, there is a vast expanse of light, an atmospheric landscape reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous sfumato technique. The deliberate dissolution of what is