The Collection “Travels” shows the impressing work of two famous photographers: Harry Weber (1921-2007) and Joe Heydecker (1916-1997).
Harry Weber was born in 1921 as son of a Jewish family near Vienna. Forced to emigrate to Palestine in the course of the National Socialist Takeover, he returned to Vienna in 1945 where he became one of the most outstanding photo journalists of the twentieth century. As chief photographer for Stern Austria, he significantly influenced the genre of photojournalism over many years and eventually became a legend for his spectacular music- and straight theatre photographs. He additionally became noted for his photographs of Jerusalem and its inhabitants. The Picture Archive purchased Harry Weber’s entire photo archive including the usage rights in 1995.
Born as a son of a liberal family in 1916, Joe J. Heydecker was educated as a photographer. In 1941 Heydecker documented the inhumane conditions and the inconceivable misery of the Jewish population in the Warsaw Ghetto with a miniature camera. These photographs are painful testimonies of the Nazi atrocities.
After the Second World War, Heydecker worked as photographer and journalist for several media. His estate, shown in the collection “Travels”, contains photographs of Romy Schneider, a series about the cemetery “Staglieno” in Genua, pictures of Brazilian art and artists, pictures of Spanish and Portuguese churches and monasteries, tropical landscapes and many more.