Cinematography in the Weimar Republic: Lola Lola, Dirty Singles, and the Men Who Shot Them

In film history, director-cinematographer collaborations were on a labor spectrum, with the model of the contracted camera operator in the silent era and that of the cinematographer in the sound era. But in Weimar era German filmmaking, 1919-33, a short period of intense artistic activity and political and economic instability, these models existed side by side due to the emergence of camera operators as independent visual artists and collaborators with directors.

Berlin in the 1920s was the...