Julius Tutsch

Julius Tutsch (1890–1944) was a Czech amateur photographer and bank clerk based in Prague, whose work formed part of the flourishing culture of interwar Czechoslovak photography. He joined the Czech Club of Amateur Photographers (Český klub fotografů amatérů) in 1927 and exhibited at the First and Second International Photography Salons in Prague in 1928 and 1933.

Working primarily in black and white, Tutsch photographed urban spaces, landscapes, interiors and figures, transforming everyday scenes through pronounced contrasts of light and shadow and carefully constructed compositions. His photography is characterised by unusual viewpoints, elongated shadows, silhouettes and an attention to the geometric structures of the modern city. Moving between the atmospheric qualities of pictorial photography and the more experimental visual language of interwar modernism, he worked with gelatin silver printing as well as the painterly bromoil-transfer process. His work was exhibited and recognised in photographic competitions in Czechoslovakia and abroad.

During the Nazi occupation, Tutsch worked in the photographic workshop of Prague’s Jewish religious community. As a Jewish man, he was persecuted during the Holocaust. On 6 March 1943, he was deported from Prague to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and on 28 September 1944 from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. His wife, Elsa Tutschová, was also murdered during the Holocaust.