“My father,” the boy said. “He was a journalist too. He used to say: ‘Will McBride sees what others hide.’ Then they shot him. At the Wall. Trying to bring out my mother’s medicine.”
He captured the Bundesrepublik before it became polished. The chain-smoking students, the topless sunbathers at the Wannsee, the first Beatles records on cheap record players. He showed a generation shaking off the guilt of their parents.
Realizing that healthy attitudes toward the body begin much earlier than adolescence, McBride partnered with psychologist Dr. Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt to design a book specifically for . The goals of the project were highly progressive for the era:
To understand “Zeig Mal!,” you first need to know Will McBride, a man who lived a life as unconventional and boundary-pushing as his art. zeig mal will mcbride
: 125 grainy, black-and-white photogravures depicting nude children, adolescents, and adults in naturalistic settings. Captions : Spontaneous quotes from children.
In 2004, the German Society for Photography (DGPh) honored him with its highest honor, the , for his life's work. In 2014, a triumphant retrospective at C/O Berlin titled "Ich war verliebt in diese Stadt" (I Was in Love with This City) brought his work full circle, showcasing his powerful early Berlin photographs from 1956 to 1963. Will McBride passed away in Berlin on January 29, 2015, at the age of 84.
Sources:
In the history of photography books, few titles have sparked as much intense debate as
“Ja,” Will said, not looking up.
Zeig Mal! was conceived during a time when sexual education was often sterile, clinical, or simply non-existent. Will McBride, who was active in Germany and known for his emotive, raw photography style, aimed to create something different. His artistic vision was to treat the human body, particularly the young human body, with purity, grace, and curiosity rather than taboo. “My father,” the boy said
, this translated to a sense of naturalism. He used soft, natural light to frame his subjects, emphasizing a "back-to-nature" philosophy that was popular in the counter-culture movements of the time. From an artistic standpoint, the work was praised for its technical mastery and its ability to capture the vulnerability and innocence of its subjects. To McBride, the body was a masterpiece of nature, and his lens treated it with a celebratory, albeit raw, honesty. The Storm of Controversy Despite its educational intent,
Will froze. Not because of the broken German, but because the boy said his full name. Slowly, he lowered the camera. “How do you know me?”