Photographis 1966

Walter Herdeg

Founder and editor of Graphis and Photographis. Celebrated graphic artist, designer, editor, and writer. 1908 - 1995. Photographis. Zurich: Graphis Press, 1966.

Photographis and Walter Herdeg
Selections from the celebrated designer and editor’s 1966 opening to the magazine Photographis

In the opening pages of Photographis 1966, a new international annual dedicated to advertising photography, editor Walter Herdeg makes a bold and immediate claim: commercial photography is not only a legitimate artistic practice—it is among the most vital and innovative forms of image-making in the modern world.

Herdeg writes with conviction, elevating the role of the advertising photographer from technician to cultural agent. The text captures a specific postwar frustration: how commercial photographers were caught in the push-pull between market demands and artistic ambition. But it’s also a celebration—a defense of the creative imagination embedded in the planning, styling, and execution of advertising images.

Below are excerpts from Herdeg’s essay, selected and broken up to give readers a sense of its structure and tone. The full text is both polemic and manifesto, full of sharp observations and grand gestures.

“Advertising... must be faced realistically”

“Advertising is a phenomenon that cannot be overlooked and must be faced realistically. In its outward manifestations and particularly in its printed expressions it also has some connection with art. Minor art, if you like, but the fact remains that it plays an interesting part in modern aesthetics alongside of art proper.”

Herdeg begins with the Reader’s Digest experiment, in which the removal of all ads from one issue triggered mass protest. His point? Advertising is deeply embedded in modern visual life—and removing it threatens not only commerce but culture itself.

The Bauhaus and the creative foundations of photography

“Without the research of J. Albers, H. Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, X. Schawinsky, O. Schlemmer and others… all the achievements in the way of the conception, realization and ‘creative’ use of the photographic image would most probably have been held up for many years.”

Here Herdeg acknowledges the Bauhaus’s influence on photographic composition, abstraction, and design thinking—crediting it as a direct source for modern advertising photography’s aesthetic vocabulary.

Advertising photography emerges to meet the moment

“All artistic and technological advances really come at the right moment… They are always a response to outer conditions, and they are successful only in so far as they satisfy a need. This is exactly what happened to advertising photography when the mystique of production and consumption took possession of our civilization.”

In Herdeg’s telling, the rise of commercial photography was inevitable—a cultural and economic necessity aligned with mid-century capitalism’s expanding image economy.

Creative control and the photographer’s constraint

“Since [photographers] are normally allowed no initiative in deciding what might be photographed… it is perhaps understandable that photographers are not particularly well disposed towards the present visualizers of advertising messages.”

“A number of diverse, heterogeneous and discontinuous operations finally produce the photograph… The actual shot is only one instant after many others.”

These passages capture the heart of Herdeg’s tension: photographers are responsible for crafting iconic images, yet are often denied full creative agency. And still, the work demands imagination—often long before the shutter is pressed.

The global convergence of commercial aesthetics

“Commerce and industry… see eye to eye in matters of advertising photography, whether they are domiciled in New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Milan or Tokyo.”

In the postwar moment, Herdeg sees a convergence in global visual style, with American advertising photography leading the way. But he’s also aware that photographers around the world are adapting and innovating within this system, not simply copying it.

Herdeg’s essay is unapologetically grand. But in making the case for advertising photography as a form of modern art, he captures something enduring: that commercial image-makers were not only producing images for sale, but actively shaping the visual culture of their time.

As a document, Herdeg’s introduction offers a rare window into how mid-century photographers understood their role—and how they hoped to be seen. It voices the desire for legitimacy, the frustration with creative constraint, and a belief that advertising photography deserved aesthetic recognition. It’s this tension—between commercial production and artistic aspiration—that makes the text so compelling.

So what do declarations like this tell us about how photographic communities define themselves? How are visual vernaculars and professional identities shaped not just by images, but by the arguments made on their behalf? And who gets to decide what counts as taste, innovation, or art?