The upcoming presentation of photographs by Maria Zisser marks the first-ever exhibition of her work.

 

Maria Zisser, née Tretscher, was born in 1914 in Vienna, where she also completed her training as a photographer. In 1940, she received her master craftsman certificate in photography and, from that point until the late 1970s, worked primarily as an industrial photographer.

 

During this time, she created a comprehensive photographic oeuvre that forms an almost uninterrupted visual record of Austrian industry and its societal, economic, and political entanglements. Her work traces the transformation from the National Socialist era to the Second Republic, the reconstruction period known as the "Austrian Economic Miracle," and continues with the documentation of major architectural projects such as Wohnpark Alterlaa, the UNO City, and many other structures that continue to shape the image of Vienna and Austria today.

 

Beyond its documentary value, Zisser’s body of work is also a testimony to the career of a woman photographer working within a conservative, patriarchal order—an order whose structural dominance in the industrial sector remained largely unchallenged, even by the emerging women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and persisted long thereafter.

 

Our archival restoration begins with Maria Zisser’s early work: starting in 1940, when she was 26 years old and began photographing for war-producing industries in Vienna following her certification as a master photographer, through to the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. She was 31 at the time.

 

The exhibition title – "The Performance Competition Has Begun" – is a direct quote from a slogan once displayed in the production halls of the STEYR company during the Nazi era, alongside many other so-called “motivational messages.” Photographs like this not only document the regime itself but also capture a system in which workers were subjected to an all-encompassing, ideologically driven culture of performance and control.

 

As part of her work, Maria Zisser was also commissioned to produce portrait photographs of every worker—used strictly for administrative and personnel records.

 

These portraits form the core of the current exhibition. The archive contains several thousand original negatives of worker portraits from the Nazi period. Although originally intended for purely bureaucratic purposes, these images go far beyond the functional. The young photographer did not produce anonymous snapshots, but rather portraits that reflect her attitude toward photography and her deep respect for the individuals she depicted.

 

This series represents a striking point of tension—between political ideology, the lived realities of people who, in many cases, were forced to work under the regime, and the perspective of a young woman at the beginning of her photographic journey.

 

This exhibition also marks the beginning of a broader investigation. Much of the industry of the Nazi era was only made possible through systematic dehumanization and forced labor. Forms of employment ranged from voluntary wage labor to so-called foreign workers, forced conscripts, slave laborers, and concentration camp prisoners. At present, the exact relationship between the individuals shown in the photographs and their respective companies or the regime remains unclear. Investigating these contexts is a vital part of the ongoing archival work accompanying this exhibition.

 

The photo studio, archive, and restoration of the work of Maria Zisser was initiated by her grandson, Vienna-based artist and curator Reinhold Zisser. The ongoing restoration and digitization is carried out in collaboration with photographer Johannes Baudrexel. Both Zisser and Baudrexel are members of LLLLLL – Association for Contemporary Art. A new studio for the Maria Zisser archive has been established in Technology Center 3 of Wirtschaftsagentur Wien in Seestadt.

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We warmly invite you to the first exhibition at LLLLLL, artist-run space. During the exhibition period, guided tours of both the exhibition and the nearby archive will be available upon request.