07. Children of the Big City

07.01 / Rope skipping

His eyes, however, were set for photography and not for graphics, which we notice in his unusual perceptiveness for the way light highlights his own statement. Waiting for the moment when the sun's rays produce long and hard shadows that bring out the rough wall contours in the backyards or make the bodies of the playing children appear as shadow images, emphasising the desolation of their existence, in this way Ballhause used light to symbolise deep feelings and ideas in the context of the situations and events designated. The fact that almost all of his photographs were taken with a hidden Leica is a testament to how his eye recognised the exact moment when light and form became one and created a scene suitable for his message.
(Rosenblum, Naomi and Walter, in: Walter Ballhause. Photographs between Weimar and Hitler 1930–1933, New York 1987).

The unusual technical quality of these pictures is due not only to the use of a modern camera, but also to his preference for bright sunlight, which provides the shadows with which Ballhause constructs his pictures. This bright light also enables him to achieve depth of field and detail even with the short exposure times necessary for working with a concealed camera of people in motion. He succeeds in taking these pictures with the film speed of 10 to 13 DIN, which was still low at the time.
Again and again he photographs children. His invisible camera enables him to capture the "secret world" of their games, conversations, to shape their serious nature. The photographer too, not only his camera, seems to be invisible in these pictures. Most pictures of children by other photographers, especially of course the family pictures by amateurs and the studio pictures by professional photographers, show the children with a friendly beaming, "cute" or grimacing actor's demeanour that is agreeable to the adults. In this way, children solicit protection and affection.
(Boström, Jörg: Ein Nachruf auf den Fotografen Walter Ballhause, in: Website Arbeiterfotografie, accessed on 02.02.2021, URL: http://www.arbeiterfotografie.de/verband/erfurt-2007/aufruf.html)

[Photo taken: View through the gorge of houses from Elisenstraße to Limmerstraße, Hanover, between March and June 1933]

07.02 / Children of Fannystraße (factory apartment of the weaving mill)

[Photo taken: Fannytraße (Fannystraße was located between Mathildenstraße and Fortunastraße. The workers' housing blocks of the Mechanical Weaving Mill and the Cotton Mill were demolished and the street was built over with high-rise buildings), Hanover, April 1931].

07.03 / New street (old town, street of the mass murderer Hamann)

[Photo taken: Hanover, March/April 1932]

07.04 / Aimless hike

[Photo taken: Side street of Charlottenstraße, near Hanomag, Hanover, March/April 1932]

07.05 / On a voyage of discovery

[Photo taken: Hanover, 1932]

07.06 / Accompaniers of buskers

[Photo taken: Fannystraße (Fannystraße was located between Mathildenstraße and Fortunastraße. The workers' housing blocks of the mechanical weaving mill and the cotton spinning mill were demolished and the street was built over with high-rise buildings), Hanover, between March and June 1933].