About the Work
Having initially practised as a physician, Paul Wolff went on to become one of the interwar period’s commercially most accomplished photographers. He marketed himself as a pioneer in the use of the Leica, a camera that—owing to its simple operability—lent itself to use by laypersons. In his studio in Frankfurt am Main, he moreover set up a photo agency. The images he distributed found their way into magazines, photo books, and brochures in Germany and abroad. He owed his success to the boom in the pictorial media and advertising that distinguished his time. His own works also appeared in a wide variety of contexts, in part without bearing any relation to the content of the text they accompanied. His 1929 shots of shadows taken during a tennis match are a case in point. They were published the following year in Die Dame to illustrate a short story in which no tennis match takes place.
