STEINERT, OTTO

(b. July 12, 1915, Saarbrcken, Ger.d. March 3, 1978, Essen-Werden, W.Ger.), German photographer, teacher, and physician, who was the founder of the Fotoform (q.v.) movement of postwar German photographers. Steinert studied medicine at various universities from 1934 to 1939, was a medical officer during World War II, and abandoned medicine for photography in about 1947, becoming a portrait photographer. He taught photography at various schools in Saarbrcken and Essen from 1952, training an entire generation of young German photographers in the process. He was best known as the founder, in 1949, and intellectual mentor of the Fotoform group of photographers, whose innovative images he displayed at the Photokina exhibition in Cologne the following year. He mounted three more highly influential photographic exhibitions (each called Subjektive Fotografie), in 1951, 1954, and 1958, which showcased the entire spectrum of West German photography since World War II. From the 1960s Steinert continued to photograph prominent people, to mount important exhibitions, and to write numerous articles on photography.