The medium of photography played a decisive role for the Viennese Actionists in documenting their ephemeral actions and thus permanently recording them for posterity. Ludwig Hoffenreich (1902-1975) was a photographer who worked particularly closely with the four artists. Although he basically worked as a journalist and was never trained in photography, he photographed their most important actions and also proved to be a friend and confidant with a great understanding of the artistic vision of the Vienna Actionists. Hardly anything is known about his personality to this day, except that he was already a 60-year-old, well-to-do middle-class gentleman when he met the artists in Vienna, who were almost forty years younger and revolted against social conventions.

The Swedish journalist and writer Gunnar Bolin reports on his search for an answer to the question of how his great-granduncle ‘Luigi’ Hoffenreich became one of the most important photographers of the Vienna Actionists.

Lecture with documentary material and audio recordings of interviews Bolin conducted with Günter and Anna Brus and Hermann Nitsch in 2007.