Showcase A
Text 1
Peter Scheier started taking amateur photographs when he lived in Hohenau, a German town on the border with Austria, between 1933 and 1937. At the time, he was working as an accountant at an uncle’s sugar factory. However, little is known about his photography during the time he lived in Europe.
When he fled to Brazil from the Nazis in 1937, his first job was as a sausage maker in a multinational meat processing plant in the district of Lapa in São Paulo.
In 1939 he started selling lampshades to eke out his income. He decided to photograph them and produce a catalog to help sales. This was the beginning of his involvement with professional photography. Lorenzetti, a manufacturer of electrical goods for the home, soon commissioned him to produce a similar booklet for its products. That same year, Scheier started working as a typographer at the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper and soon started taking photographs for the newspaper`s illustrated supplement, the Suplemento em Rotogravura.
Text 2
The Foto Studio Peter Scheier operated in São Paulo from the early 1940s until 1975. It was a family-owned business based in Scheier’s home and was administered by his wife, Gertrude Willheim.
Scheier always worked in many different areas. In the beginning, the studio’s main business was meeting the demand for private portraits and photography for social occasions such as marriages, baptisms, balls, inaugurations and graduation ceremonies. As well as developing and printing Scheier`s own work, the studio also provided laboratory services to other photographers. Scheier soon started taking advertising and architectural photographs. This was in addition to his work for the magazine O Cruzeiro and MASP in the 1940s and 50s. From the 1950s, as well as selling photo reports to international agencies, he focused on industrial photography and on institutional marketing work commissioned by public bodies.
The Foto Studio Peter Scheier had a number of employees, some of whom worked as photographers, especially for social occasions.
At the end of the 1950s, Scheier’s teenage children, Thomas and Bettina, started helping out at the studio. Over the next decade, both of them became professional photographers.
Showcase A – Captions
A1
“Pacaembu Stadium”. O Estado de S. Paulo. Photographic Supplement, 1st Fortnight, Sept. 1939,
pp. 15-16.
BIBLIOTECA MÁRIO DE ANDRADE COLLECTION
A2
Wedding Album, c. 1950
ALBUM ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER. VINTAGE PRINT.
RUBENS FERNANDES JUNIOR COLLECTION
A3
Wedding Album, c. 1950
ALBUM ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER. VINTAGE PRINT.
RUBENS FERNANDES JUNIOR COLLECTION
A4
Business Card for the Scheier Company with the names of Gertrude and Peter Scheier
INSTITUTO PETER SCHEIER COLLECTION
A5
Album of Graduates from the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras “Sedes Sapientiae”, São Paulo, 1957.
ALBUM ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER. VINTAGE PRINT.
INSTITUTO MOREIRA SALLES COLLECTION
A6
Estúdio Peter Scheier, São Paulo, c. 1947
No author, photos by Peter Scheier.
PHOTOGRAPH ON PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER. PRINTED IN 2019.
INSTITUTO MOREIRA SALLES COLLECTION
A7
Thomas and Bettina Scheier in the Lab of the Estúdio Peter Scheier, São Paulo, c. 1947
PHOTOGRAPH ON PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER. PRINTED IN 2019.
INSTITUTO MOREIRA SALLES COLLECTION
A8
Album of Contact Prints of the Activities of the Studio Peter Scheier, São Paulo, undated
PHOTOGRAPHS ON PAPER, GELATIN SILVER, GLUED ONTO BOND PAPER. VINTAGE PRINT.
INSTITUTO PETER SCHEIER COLLECTION
Studio and References
Showcase B
Text 3
Scheier traveled a number of times to the United States and established relationships with two photojournalism agencies – Monkmeyer Press Photo Service and Pix Incorporated. During his career, he published photographs in Time, Life and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as other international magazines.
Items in his private library, such as the book The Decisive Moment. Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1952), the catalog for the exhibition The Family of Man, shown at MoMA in New York in 1955, and the compendium The Best of Life (1974), show that his references extended beyond the sensationalist photojournalism that prevailed in O Cruzeiro in the 1940s. Above all, from the 1950s, the spontaneity captured by Cartier-Bresson and the agency Magnum’s photoshoot approach, which combined social exposés with aesthetic values, became models for photographers in Brazil, as did Life, with its dynamic page layouts echoing movie making, established a visual narrative standard that was adopted by illustrated magazines throughout the world.
Showcase B – Captions
B1
“The Compulsive Candidate”. The Saturday Evening Post, 4.23.1966, pp. 36-37.
Text by Andrew J. Glass, photos by Peter Scheier.
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION
B2
David E. Scherman. The Best of Life. Nova York: Time-Life Books, 1973.
PETER SCHEIER’S PRIVATE LIBRARY
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION
B3
Edward Steichen. Cover of the catalog for the exhibition The Family of Man. Museum of Modern Art of New York, 1955.
PETER SCHEIER’S PRIVATE LIBRARY
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION
B4
Catalog for the Henri Cartier- Bresson. Museu de Arte Moderna de Nova-York, 1947.
PETER SCHEIER’S PRIVATE LIBRARY
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION
B5
Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Decisive Moment. New York/Paris: Simon and Schuster/Éditions Verve, 1952.
PETER SCHEIER’S PRIVATE LIBRARY
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION
B6
Campos do Jordão, São Paulo, c. 1946
PHOTOGRAPH ON PAPER, GELATIN AND SILVER.
INSTITUTO MOREIRA SALLES COLLECTION
B7
“Scheier’s São Paulo. Introducing Peter Scheier, a South American Photographer”. US Camera, June 1946, pp. 26-27.
No author, photos by Peter Scheier.
LUCAS LENCI COLLECTION