Stefan Moses: ach, europa.
Photograph by Stefan Moses: “photoplastik lady with barsoi”, print on baryta paper, black and white, 30 x 40 cm

In February 2012, a surprised Andreas Langen thanked Stefan Moses for his “kind gestures”. Moses, a member of the GDL since 1965, had sent Langen, unannounced and on a spontaneous, intuitive impulse, a collection of photographs and an extensive bibliography on his life and work. “Should your donations, particularly the valuable prints, be added to the DFA archive?” Andreas Langen asked in a letter – and never received a reply. Now, Langen has kindly transferred the donations from his colleague at the Academy to the DFA archive.

From this collection, we are showing here a print on baryta paper (30 x 40 cm), the reverse of which is at least as fascinating.
Moses has written ‘photoplastik’ on the back, along with the following quatrain:

oh, the greeks ~
oh, europe ~
oh, time ~
oh, old age ~

One mystery concerns a number that Moses wrote by hand in pencil, split across the address stamp. Does it say ‘19 münchen 72’ or ‘19 münchen 92’?
Next to it, Moses has noted the title:
lady with a borzoi
biodola elba

Now, the very well-known photograph of the same title is officially dated 1976 and shows a much less cluttered scene than ours. In it, the lady and her dog are sitting on the beach; she is pointing straight ahead, with the open sea before them, featuring only a small two-person boat in the centre in it, and on the horizon – which runs almost perfectly straight to the very top of the picture – is the large yacht. Our image is a different shot: here, the lady points to the left, the horizon slopes down to the right, and Moses has also superimposed the Acropolis in the centre of the picture, so that it appears to be sinking into the sea. Only the dog is still looking straight ahead. Stefan Moses surely appreciated this detail just as much as his own reversal of the biblical story.

Images continually unfold their impact anew within the temporal context of their reception. Viewed from the perspective of summer 2026, this photomontage gains immense momentum.

Corinna Weidner, DFA Archive