Workers

Challenging the previous styles of photography, Wolff created images that captured a wide variety of subjects in motion, at unique angles, rarely posed. Vor dem Start nach New York is a close rendering of an airplane propeller with a man’s face visible through the rabidly spinning blades. The blades are cut off from the edges of the frame, pulling the viewer closer to the propeller. Workers shows three men laboring, their bodies angled diagonally and tense with motion as they push a large object. With the technology and mechanical innovation brought upon by WW1, Germany began to industrialize, and so this work celebrates the working class laborers of Germany.