Exhibition: ‘Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light’ at NGV International, Melbourne, Part 1

Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2025 – 3rd May, 2026

Curator: Maggie Finch, Curator of Photography at the NGV

Mina Moore (New Zealand, 1882-1957)
Nellie Stewart
c. 1913-1916
Gelatin silver photograph
18.6 x 12.7cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of the Latrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, 1992

Sisters May and Mina Moore operated their photography studio from 1913 in the newly completed Auditorium Building at 167 Collins Street, Melbourne. This building also housed a concert hall, where recitals, operas and music performances were presented. The location was particularly advantageous for the photographers as it provided a steady stream of performers and productions in need of promotional portraits.

Wall text from the exhibition

Nellie Stewart, born Eleanor Stewart Towzey (1858-1931) was an Australian actress and singer, known as “Our Nell” and “Sweet Nell”. Born into a theatrical family, Stewart began acting as a child. As a young woman, she built a career playing in operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

It’s great to have a record of this extensive photography exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

In this first part of the exhibition, Part 1 of a huge two-part posting on Art Blart (posting proceeds as in a walk through of the exhibition), highlights for me included:

~ Two photographs by the under appreciated Bahaus artist and self taught photographer Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) whose portraits of friends, still-lifes, and performative self-portrait images are rarely seen

~ Six small, intense, jewel-like photographs by Bauhaus student Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) of “new women” and street corners in Ginza, Japan which were a revelation for their beauty, pictorial composition, tonality, spatiality and physical presence of the image

~ The groundbreaking portfolio Métal by Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) which was magnificently laid out so that you could “appreciate its unique design as an object” and the “vitality of the photography”, allowing the viewer to begin to understand the complex relationships between images one to another and the flow of the whole folio. A joy to behold!

More comment to follow in Part 2 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the NGV for allowing me to publish the media images in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. View Part 2 of the posting.

Entrance to the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Mina and May Moore’s Murial Starr (c. 1913-1916, below); at second left, May Moore’s Janina Korolewicz-Wayda (c. 1910-1920); at at third right, Mina Moore’s Nellie Stewart (c. 1913-1916, above)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the wide-ranging photographic practices of more than eighty women artists working between 1900 and 1975. Featuring prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines, the exhibition explores the role of photographers as image-makers, and the ways in which women artists create an image of themselves, of others, of the times – from images of the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond. From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition showcases the works of trailblazing artists such as Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many more.

The exhibition reflects a recent collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography Collection. Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, photomontage, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light presents the diverse work of women photographers against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing May and Mina Moore’s Murial Starr (c. 1913-1916, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

May and Mina Moore (New Zealand, 1881-1931 and 1882-1957)
Murial Starr
c. 1913-1916
Gelatin silver photograph
19.6 x 12.5cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of the Latrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, 1992

Sisters May and Mina Moore established their Wellington studio-portraiture business in around 1907. May, originally trained as a painter, learned to operate the camera while Mina, a schoolteacher, gained skills in printing. Expanding their business to Australia, May established a Sydney studio in 1911 while, two years later, Mina set up a Melbourne studio, which was later taken over by photographer Ruth Hollick. The pair became known for their studio portraits of actors, artists and musicians. Using only natural light, they created dramatic images marked by a striking chiaroscuro effect (a technique involving strong contrasts of light and shade) on the faces of their subjects.

Wall text from the exhibition

Muriel Starr (1888-1950) was a Canadian stage actress. She was particularly popular in Australia in the 1910s and 1920s. She appeared in one film, Within the Law (1916), an adaptation of her stage success. She was also known for the plays East of Suez, Birds of Paradise and Madame X.

Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing May and Mina Moore’s No title (Woman) (c. 1914)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition 'Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light' at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 - May 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Isabel Seymour (England, 1882-1963) The Seymour Album (c. 1907-1911). Recent acquisition
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

The suffragette Isabel Seymour was employed by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in London in 1906. Fluent in English and German, she facilitated international speaking tours for the organisation. Assembled by Seymour for the WSPU, this personal scrapbook includes photographs, postcards, advertisements and newspaper articles detailing suffragette activities. The album provides a historical snapshot of the activities and people involved in the suffragette movement, through one of its key organisations.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Woman’s Social and Political Union (distributor) Toye & Co. (manufacturer) Medal for Valour, awarded to Selina Martin, with original box (1909); Selina Martin (England, 1882-1972) No title (Photographic album containing images and handwritten text relating to Selina Martin) (c. 1910); Lizzie Casual Smith (England, 1870-1956) Miss Christabel Pankhurst (c. 1900s)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Woman’s Social and Political Union (distributor) Toye & Co. (manufacturer) Medal for Valour, awarded to Selina Martin, with original box (1909) and at right, Selina Martin (England, 1882-1972) No title (Photographic album containing images and handwritten text relating to Selina Martin) (c. 1910)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

The suffragette Selina Martin joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908. She was imprisoned on several occasions due to her activism and was awarded a Hunger Strike Medal for valour by the WSPU. This album is Martin’s personal compilation of photographs, postcards and writings, many of which relate to the suffragette cause. It includes writing from notable acquaintances such as political activist and suffragette Mary Leigh, and human rights activist and feminist Ethel Snowden.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

Selina Martin (English, 1882-1972) was a member of the suffragette movement in the early 20th century. She was arrested several times. Her Hunger Strike Medal given ‘for Valour’ by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was sold at auction in Nottingham in 2019.

Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Gertrude Kasebier The gargoyle (c. 1900, below); at third right, Ruth Hollick No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison) (c. 1920, below); at second right, Ruth Hollick Thought (1921, below); and at right, Madame d’Ora Untitled (1931, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Image-Makers: Women in Photography

By the start of the twentieth century, photography was becoming increasingly accessible to the public in many cities around the world. Previously, the medium was practised by an affluent minority of amateur artists and commercial studios. However, the production of lower-cost cameras gradually opened up photography to the broader public, particularly the expanding middle class. At the same time, women began to participate in photography as both creators and consumers. For many women, photography offered a means of income, a way to document daily life, and a powerful tool for communication and activism.

In England, suffragettes actively used photography to create and share images that were integral to their campaign for women’s right to vote. The suffragettes constructed their images in photographic studios and in the streets, merging style and fashionable dress with politics and self-assuredness. These photographs became crucial in shaping the public image of the suffrage movement.

In Australia, May and Mina Moore ran a successful photographic business. Known for their dramatically lit portraits of stage performers, they responded to the appetite for stylised portraiture as popularised by the suffragettes. At a time of shifting gender roles, May Moore also advocated publicly for women to work in photography.

Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Gertrude Kasebier The gargoyle (c. 1900, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Gertrude Kasebier (American, 1852-1934) 'Gargoyle' 1901

Gertrude Kasebier (American, 1852-1934)
The gargoyle
c. 1900
Platinum photograph
20.6 x 13.5 cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Herald & Weekly Times Limited, Fellow, 1979

In the early twentieth century, leading Pictorialist photographer Gertrude Käsebier played a key role in establishing photography as a form of fine art. As a member of the Photo-Secession group alongside Alfred Stieglitz, Käsebier was dedicated to Pictorialism, a style that emphasised artistic expression over documentary accuracy. This photograph, taken in Paris, highlights the painterly, emotional qualities inherent in Pictorialism. Käsebier has created an evocative image using composition and light to transform the scene. After leaving the Photo-Secession group in 1912, Käsebier became a founder and active member of the Pictorial Photographers of America.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Ruth Hollick No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison) (c. 1920, below); at second left, Ruth Hollick Thought (1921, below); and at right, Madame d’Ora Untitled (1931, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977)
No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison)
c. 1920
Gelatin silver photograph
20.0 x 14.6cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, Member, 1993
Public domain

Ruth Hollick attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1906 and began to photograph commercially around 1908. In 1918, along with her life and professional partner, fellow photographer Dorothy Izard, she took over the studio of May and Mina Moore at 167 Collins Street, Melbourne. Eventually Hollick expanded her studio into the newly completed Chartres House building next door at 165 Collins Street. From 1920 her photographs were regularly included in magazines as well as Australian and British Pictorialist exhibitions and salons. Hollick closed her city studio in the early 1930s but continued working from her home in the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds into the 1960s.

Wall text from the exhibition

Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977)
Thought
1921
Gelatin silver photograph
37.4 x 25.3cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, Member, 1993
Public domain

This sensitive portrait depicts the artist’s niece Lucy Crosbie Morrison. The pose of the subject, combined with the title, reveals the photographer’s careful direction and artistic ambition. The subject’s outfit, adorned with appliqué gum leaves and a gumnut belt, references native Australian plants. The work aligns with the style of Pictorialism, a popular international photographic trend at the time. Thought was recognised at the 1921 Colonial Exhibition in London, highlighting both its local significance and broader artistic appeal.

Wall text from the exhibition

Dora Kallmus (Madame d'Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963) 'Untitled' 1931 (installation view)

Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963)
Untitled (installation view)
1931
Gelatin silver photograph
22.4 x 16.4cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Dora Kallmus, known professionally as Madame d’Ora, photographed high-profile figures associated with art, fashion and politics, including Josephine Baker and Coco Chanel. In 1907 Madame d’Ora opened her first studio in Vienna, Atelier d’Ora, one of the first photography studios in Vienna to be operated by a woman. She later moved to Paris, where her career flourished well into the 1930s – Atelier d’Ora was renowned for its glamorous, softly focused portraits – until she was forced to close her studio due to Nazi occupation.

Wall text from the exhibition

Dora Kallmus (1881-1963), better known as Madame d’Ora, was an unusual woman for her time with a spectacular career as one of the leading photographic portraitists of the early twentieth century. This exhibition, the largest museum retrospective on the Austrian photographer to date in the United States, presents the different periods of her life, from her early upbringing as the daughter of Jewish intellectuals in Vienna, to her days as a premier society photographer, through her survival during the Holocaust. Forging a path in a field that was dominated by men, d’Ora enjoyed an illustrious 50-year career, from 1907 until 1957. The show includes more than 100 examples of her work, which is distinguished for its extreme elegance, and utter depth and darkness.

Born into a privileged background and coming of age amidst the creative and intellectual atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, Kallmus was extremely well cultured. At age 23 while on a trip to the Côte d’Azur, she purchased her first camera, a Kodak box camera. She was the first woman photographer in Vienna to open her own studio and in May 1906, she was listed in the commercial register as a photographer for the first time. Self-styled simply as d’Ora, she initially took portraits of friends and members from her social circle. In the autumn of 1909, an exhibition of her work received a lively response from the press. Critics both praised the artistic style of her portraits and emphasized the prominent individuals who streamed in to view the show.

Over the course of her lifetime, d’Ora turned her lens on many artists, including Josephine Baker, Colette, Gustav Klimt, Tamara de Lempicka, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Alongside these commissions, she also photographed members of the Habsburg family and Viennese aristocracy, the Rothschild family, and other prominent cultural figures and politicians. D’Ora had close ties to avant-garde artistic circles and captured members of the Expressionist dance movement with her lens, including Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste. Fashion and glamor subjects were another important mainstay of her business. She regularly photographed Wiener Werkstätte fashion models and the designer Emilie Flöge of the Schwestern Flöge salon wearing artistic reform dresses. When d’Ora moved to Paris in 1925, she shifted her focus to fashion, covering the couture scene and leading lights of the period until 1940. She befriended key figures, such as the French milliner Madame Agnès and the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, as well as the top fashion magazine editors of the day. She also helped create and sustain glamorous images for a variety of celebrities, including Cecil Beaton, Maurice Chevalier, and Colette.

When the Nazis seized control of Paris in 1940, she was forced to close her studio and flee. She spent the war years in a semi-underground existence living in Ardèche in the southeast of France. Her sister Anna Kallmus, along with other family and friends, died in the Chełmno concentration camp. After World War II, d’Ora returned to Paris, profoundly affected by personal losses. While she lacked an elegant studio in Paris, d’Ora’s lasting connections to wealthy clients remained and many of them returned to her. While she accepted portrait commissions, mostly for financial stability, she also pushed into new, sometimes darker directions. Around 1948, she embarked on an astonishing series of photographs in displaced persons or refugee camps, which was commissioned by the United Nations. From around 1949 to 1958, d’Ora worked on a project, which she called “my big final work.” She visited numerous slaughterhouses in Paris, and amid the pools of blood and deathly screams, she stood in an elegant suit and a hat photographing the butchered animals hundreds of times.

Anonymous. “Madame d’Ora,” on the Neue Galerie website Nd [Online] Cited 30/03/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Madame D’Ora The Dolly Sisters (c. 1928, below); at second right, Trude Fleischmann The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna (c. 1926, below); and at right, Trude Fleischmann View of Michaelerplatz, Vienna (1929, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Dora Kallmus (Madame d'Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963) 'The Dolly sisters' c. 1928 (installation view)

Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963)
The Dolly sisters (installation views)
c. 1928
Gelatin silver photograph
18.0 x 21.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Around 1928 Madame d’Ora photographed the Dolly Sisters, who were celebrated for their glamorous performances in the 1920s. Jenny and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-American identical twins, were vaudeville and cabaret dancers adored in Britain, the United States and across Europe for their beauty and erotically charged performances. In d’Ora’s photograph they embody the ideal of the modern woman, with bobbed hair and short skirts, dressed in glittering couture costumes and adorned with pearls.

Wall text from the exhibition

Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990) 'The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna' c. 1926 (installation view)

Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990)
The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna
c. 1926
Gelatin silver photograph
21.9 x 16.2cm (image)
22.9 x 17.1cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Trude Fleischmann studied photography in Paris and, after graduating from the Viennese visual arts college die Graphische, apprenticed in the studio of photographer Madame d’Ora. In 1920 Fleischmann opened her own studio, specialising in female nudes, celebrity and socialite portraits, and glamorous photographs of actors. In 1938 she fled Austria, eventually settling in New York, where she re-established her studio and continued to focus on portraits of high-profile figures. This portrait depicts the Viennese actress Sibylle Binder, who performed throughout Germany and Austria in the 1920s. Binder is photographed in glamorous dress and with the classic short, androgynous hairstyle of the New Woman.

Wall text from the exhibition

Sybille Binder (Austrian, 1895-1962)

Sybille Binder (5 January 1895 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian actress of Jewish descent whose career of over 40 years was based variously in her home country, Germany and Britain, where she found success in films during the 1940s.

Career

Binder began her stage career in Berlin in 1915, then in 1918 moved to Munich, where she enjoyed success in classical drama. Between 1916 and 1918 she also appeared in a handful of silent films. In 1922, she returned to Berlin and received acclaim for her performance in Frank Wedekind’s Earth Spirit. Over the next few years she performed regularly in Germany and Austria then, in the mid-1930s as war approached and conditions in Germany became difficult, she made the decision to move to England.

Between 1942 and 1950 Binder featured in 13 British films, including several of superior quality. Her first screen appearance in Britain came auspiciously in the highly acclaimed supernatural drama Thunder Rock, playing opposite dramatic heavyweights including Michael Redgrave, James Mason and Frederick Valk. Other notable films in which Binder appeared were war drama Candlelight in Algeria (1944), hugely popular period melodrama Blanche Fury, espionage thriller Against the Wind and amnesia-themed romance Portrait from Life (all 1948).

Binder returned to Germany in 1950, settling in Düsseldorf, where she successfully picked up her stage career but did not attempt to break into the German film industry. She died on 30 June 1962, aged 67.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990) 'View of Michaelerplatz, Vienna' (Blick zum Michaelerplatz Wien) 1929 (installation view)

Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990)
View of Michaelerplatz, Vienna (Blick zum Michaelerplatz Wien)
1929
Gelatin silver photograph
18.4 x 16.6cm (image)
19.0 x 17.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at third left, Kitty Hoffmann Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) (1930, below); at third right, Lotte Jacobi Head of a dancer (1929, below); at second right, Gertrud Arndt Mask self-portrait No. 11 (1930, below); and at right, Gertrud Arndt Wera Waldek (1930, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

New Women, New Visions

Photography studios flourished in the early twentieth century. In Vienna, Austria, numerous prominent women photographers ran successful businesses, including Madame d’Ora and later Trude Fleischmann and Kitty Hoffmann. While Madame d’Ora’s glamorous portraits retained the soft focus characteristic of turn-of-the-century photography, the women in Fleischmann’s and Hoffmann’s images of the 1920s and 1930s matched the mood of the modern city. With their chic dress and bobbed haircuts, they represented the famed ‘New Woman’, or Neue Frau, an archetype that came to symbolise female empowerment and the shift away from traditional gender roles.

Opening in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, the Bauhaus art school experienced an influx of women students due to changes in the country’s constitution that guaranteed women the right to vote and study. Photography, while not officially taught at the Bauhaus for some years, flourished: it was seen to be an essential means of expression appropriate for the modern age. Lucia Moholy and her husband, Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy, promoted the idea of ‘New Vision’ at the school. The camera was seen as the ultimate mirror of the everyday, while the camera-less images they produced allowed for great experimentation and abstraction.

Kitty Hoffmann (Austrian, 1900-1968) 'Posing dance group' (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) 1930 (installation view)

Kitty Hoffmann (Austrian, 1900-1968)
Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) (installation view)
1930
Gelatin silver photograph
15.9 x 19.8cm (image)
16.8 x 20.7cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Kitty Hoffmann (Austrian, 1900-1968)
Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin)
1930
Gelatin silver photograph
15.9 x 19.8cm (image) 16.8 x 20.7cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024

Kitty Hoffmann worked and studied at Vienna’s die Graphische visual arts college from 1922 to 1924. Three years later, upon completing her studies, she opened a photographic studio in the city, specialising in fashion and society portraiture. Hoffmann’s photographs were regularly published in popular lifestyle and theatre magazines of the time, including Die Dame von Heute (The Lady of Today) and Die Bühne (The Stage). This photograph depicts dancers from the Trude Goodwin dance group. The dancers form a graphic shape that echoes the oval stage-set behind them, encapsulating the Ausdruckstanz, or ‘expressive dance’ movement, which reached peak popularity in Vienna during the 1920s.

Wall text from the exhibition

Lotte Jacobi (German-American, 1896-1990)
Head of a dancer
1929, printed c. 1970
Gelatin silver photograph
26.4 x 33.2cm (image)
27.7 x 35.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
Public domain

Lotte Jacobi’s father and grandfather were also photographers, and her great-grandfather studied with Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype. This modernist portrait features Russian dancer Niuta Norskaya. The dancer’s pale, oval-shaped face is encompassed by her wide-brimmed black hat, resulting in a striking study of modern beauty.

Wall text from the exhibition

Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) 'Mask self-portrait no. 11' (Maskenselbstbildnis Nr. 11) 1930 (installation view)

Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000)
Mask self-portrait no. 11 (Maskenselbstbildnis Nr. 11) (installation views)
1930
Gelatin silver photograph
22.9 x 14.7cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Gertrud Arndt (born Gertrud Hantschk in Upper Silicia) set out to become an architect, beginning a three-year apprenticeship in 1919 at the architecture firm of Karl Meinhardt in Erfurt, where her family lived at the time. While there, she began teaching herself photography by taking pictures of buildings in town. She also attended courses in typography, drawing, and art history at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of design). Encouraged by Meinhardt, a friend of Walter Gropius, Arndt was awarded a scholarship to continue her studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Enrolled from 1923 to 1927, Arndt took the Vorkurs (foundation course) from László Moholy-Nagy, who was a chief proponent of the value of experimentation with photography. After her Vorkurs, Georg Muche, leader of the weaving workshop, persuaded her to join his course, which then became the formal focus of her studies. Upon graduation, in March 1927, she married fellow Bauhaus graduate and architect Alfred Arndt. The couple moved to Probstzella in Eastern Germany, where Arndt photographed buildings for her husband’s architecture firm.

In 1929, Hannes Meyer invited Alfred Arndt to teach at the Bauhaus, where Arndt focused her energy on photography, entering her period of greatest activity, featuring portraits of friends, still-lifes, and a series of performative self-portraits, as well as At the Masters’ Houses, which shows the influence of her studies with Moholy-Nagy as well as her keen eye for architecture. After the Bauhaus closed, in 1932, the couple left Dessau and moved back to Probstzella. Three years after the end of World War II the family moved to Darmstadt; Arndt almost completely stopped making photographs.

Mitra Abbaspour, Associate Curator, Department of Photography “Gertrud Arndt,” on the MoMA website 2014 [Online] Cited 31/03/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) 'Wera Waldek' 1930, printed 1984 (installation view)

Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000)
Wera Waldek
1930, printed 1984
From the Bauhaus portfolio I (1919-1933) 1984
Gelatin silver photograph
(19.0 x 22.5cm) irreg. (image)
27.0 x 35.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Galerie Kicken Berlin in memory of Rudolf Kicken (1947-2014), 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Originally wanting to study architecture, Gertrud Arndt enrolled at the Bauhaus school in 1923-1924, ultimately specialising in weaving. A self-taught photographer, she informally developed her skills while apprenticing at an architect’s office in Erfurt prior to her studies, later photographing buildings for her husband’s architecture firm. Printing this picture in its negative state, rather than turning it into a positive image, Arndt creates a striking dreamlike effect. The portrait depicts fellow Bauhaus architecture student Wera Waldek, who made designs for children’s play furniture and housing interiors. The image forms part of the Bauhaus Portfolio I 1919-1933, published by Rudolf Kicken Galerie in 1984.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right in the bottom image, Florence Henri Still life (Nature morte) (1931 printed 1975, below); Elsa Thiemann (German, 1910-1981) Design for wallpaper (1930-1931); 1930s photographs by Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) see below; and two 1920s photographs by Lucia Moholy of the Bauhaus, Dessau, see below
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Elsa Thiemann trained in painting, graphic design and photography at the Bauhaus school. While there, she responded to an advertisement from school director Hannes Meyer for wallpaper designs to be considered for the new Bauhaus collection, planned for production by the wallpaper manufacturer Gebrüder Rasch. Thiemann’s designs used photograms of flowers and hand-coloured swirling patterns, which were meticulously cut, organised and pasted into repetitious symmetrical layouts. While her designs were not manufactured, likely due to their contrast with the brighter patterns ultimately selected for production, they remain as standalone works indicative of the experimental design being practised at the Bauhaus.

New acquisition. Wall text from the exhibition

Florence Henri (European, 1893-1982)
Still life (Nature morte)
1931, printed 1975
Gelatin silver photograph
35.9 x 47.9cm (image and sheet)
ed. 6/9
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2022
© Florence Henri / Licensed by the Copyright Agency, Australia

After studying music and painting, Florence Henri was introduced to photography in 1927 while attending the Bauhaus school. There, she met László Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy, whose influence (especially Moholy’s) led Henri to focus solely on photography. In 1929 she established a studio in Paris, where she became renowned for her avant-garde and experimental practice. In addition to portraits of women, her work often features still-life compositions that combine everyday objects like envelopes and sheets of paper with natural elements such as flowers and leaves. Henri also frequently used mirrors as a means of fragmenting the pictorial space.

Wall text from the exhibition. New acquisition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing photographs by Yamawaki Michiko, top to bottom, left to right: Ginza (Street corner) (1932, below); Ginza (Women in matching kimonos and white parasols) (1932); Ginza (Woman walking with 1930s style dress, white, with white hat) (1932, below); Ginza (Two women crossing street, one with white hat) (1932, below); Ginza (Ginza Palace) (1932, below); Ginza (Pumps and sandals walking on sidewalk) (1932). New acquisitions
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Yamawaki Michiko and her husband spent two years studying at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany from 1930, returning to Japan in 1932. Taken in the summer of 1933, Yamawaki’s Tokyo street scenes show the influence of the Bauhaus vision, while highlighting the differing roles of women at a time of great social change. We see mothers carrying children, women in kimono holding parasols, and moga (modern girls) wearing knee-length dresses and Western-inspired clothes. Yamawaki used details from twenty-one of these photographs to create her bustling modernist photomontage Melted Tokyo, published in Asahi Camera magazine in 1933.

Wall text from the exhibition

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) 'Ginza (Street corner)' 1932 (installation view)

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932)
Ginza (Street corner) (installation view)
1932
Gelatin silver photograph
11.0 x 8.2 cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) 'Ginza (Woman walking with 1930s style dress, white, with white hat)' 1932 (installation view)

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932)
Ginza (Woman walking with 1930s style dress, white, with white hat) (installation view)
1932
Gelatin silver photograph
11.2 x 8.3cm (image)
12.6 x 10.0cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) 'Ginza (Two women crossing street, one with white hat)' 1932 (installation view)

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932)
Ginza (Two women crossing street, one with white hat) (installation view)
1932
Gelatin silver photograph
11.2 x 8.2cm (image)
12.6 x 10.0cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932)
Ginza (Ginza Palace) (installation view)
1932
Gelatin silver photograph
11.2 x 8.3cm (image)
12.5 x 10.0cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at top, Lucia Moholy Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard (1926, below); and at bottom, Lucia Moholy Berlin Architecture Exhibition (1928, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989) 'Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard' (Bauhaussiedlung Dessau, küche – anrichte) 1926 (installation view)

Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989)
Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard (Bauhaussiedlung Dessau, küche – anrichte)
1926
Gelatin silver photograph
11.9 x 16.8cm (image)
13.0 x 17.9cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Lucia Moholy is best known for documenting the architecture, people and creative outputs of the Bauhaus school. Her work was often incorrectly attributed to famous men of the school, such as its founder, Walter Gropius, and Moholy’s then husband, László Moholy-Nagy. In this photograph, Moholy captures Gropius’s kitchen in the Masters’ House. The building and the design schools nearby, built between 1925 and 1926, are exemplars of European modern architecture and design. Sharp lines and dynamic angles emphasise the modular design, displaying the modernist principles of photography that Moholy applied to her images of architectural spaces.

Wall text from the exhibition

Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989)
Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard (Bauhaussiedlung Dessau, küche – anrichte)
1926
Gelatin silver photograph
11.9 x 16.8cm (image) 13.0 x 17.9cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023
© 2023 Lucia Moholy Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

“I suggest that Walter Gropius was most likely not interested in the ‘design’ of kitchens. These function rooms he would have not visited often nor did he cook. Gropius had a maid while in the Bauhaus as well as in later life. The kitchen at the Bauhaus was functional according to the times and the needs as seen by the employers of the maids who worked in them. Whereas the Frankfurt Kitchens were a result of attention to design as well as function and efficiency. …

Lucia had not enjoyed small town Dessau and intense campus life at the Bauhaus. She worked in Berlin but at in 1933 Moholy had to flee in fear of arrest for her communist association, leaving all her possessions behind including her negatives.

After time on Prague and Paris, Lucia Moholy settled In England in 1934 where she worked as a portrait photographer and teacher. …

After seeing her images as uncredited illustrations in the catalogue of a 1938 exhibition on the Bauhaus at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and many later publications, Lucia Moholy became aware that her negatives had survived. She found they had come into the possession of Walter Gropius who took them to his new teaching post America in 1937. He could easily have found Lucia post war. For years Lucia Moholy asked Gropius to give the plates back but he would not until her lawyers were able to force the return about half the original number in 1957. She complained that Gropius enjoyed the use and income from the photographs while she lived in want.”

Gael Newton AM. “Lucia Moholy: The Kitchen,” on the Photo-web website, March 2026 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

The question remains: what happened to the remaining negatives not returned by Walter Gropius to Lucia Moholy in the 1957 settlement? According to Moholy’s own card catalogue, which she used to keep track of her works, 330 negatives remained missing from her collection by the time of her death in 1989. Lost, damaged or stolen … the reputation of Gropius is forever sullied by his unseemly, grasping, patriarchal actions. MB

Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989) 'Berlin Architecture Exhibition' (Exposition d'Architecture à Berlin en 1928) 1928 (installation view)

Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989)
Berlin Architecture Exhibition (Exposition d’Architecture à Berlin en 1928)
1928
Gelatin silver photograph
16.3 x 22.4cm (image)
16.9 x 22.9 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

In 1928 Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy left Dessau for a new life in Berlin. This image documents an innovative housing exhibition showcasing modern living. The display, designed by architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school, featured new housing concepts in Zehlendorf, a Berlin neighbourhood. The graphic lettering on the building translates to ‘Live in a green environment, ideal case: Zehlendorf’. Moholy-Nagy designed the interiors, and Moholy’s images, with their signature focus on starkly contrasting vertical and horizontal lines, highlight their modernist design principles.

Wall text from the exhibition

Like many women of her time, Lucia Moholy often found herself in the shadow cast by her more conspicuous male peers – one of whom happened to be her husband, the photographer László Moholy-Nagy. After marrying in 1921, the couple moved to Weimar, Germany, so that he could begin a professorship at the Bauhaus, the influential German school of architecture, design, and applied arts. While László taught, Lucia undertook photography training, serving as an apprentice in Otto Eckner’s Bauhaus photography studio. By 1926 she had mastered a wide range of techniques, installed a darkroom in their home, and begun collaborating with her husband on experimental forms of cameraless photography.

As part of her photographic practice, Lucia began documenting the people and architectural spaces of the Bauhaus. Many of her images focus on the women who either supported or participated in the school’s activities. Edith Tschichold (1926), for instance, depicts the wife of German typographer and frequent Bauhaus collaborator Jan Tschichold. Meanwhile, Florence Henri (1927) portrays the notable Surrealist artist at the outset of her career, when she came to the Bauhaus in 1927 as a visiting photography student. Both portraits are tightly cropped around the women’s faces, revealing expressions of wistfulness or self-assurance that pull viewers into a shared emotional space.

One of Lucia’s more iconic portraits is an untitled photograph of her husband, who, sporting a machinist’s coveralls over his shirt and tie, humorously attempts to block the camera lens with his hand. The candid shot hints at the playful nature of the couple’s working relationship; once circulated, it also helped to shape László’s persona as an artist-constructor. Despite happy appearances, their relationship began to deteriorate as László declined to credit Lucia for many of their collaborations, including the celebrated 1925 book Malerei, Photografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film).

This was not the only – or even the most significant – erasure of Lucia’s career. Forced to flee Germany in 1933 due to the rise of the Nazi Party, she made the difficult decision to leave behind her collection of 560 glass-plate negatives, which she described as “my only tangible asset.”

Following World War II, in the midst of a revival of interest in the Bauhaus, she tried desperately to locate them with no success. It wasn’t until 1954 that Walter Gropius, founder and former head of the Bauhaus, acknowledged that the negatives were in his possession, that he had been reproducing them, and that he had no intention of returning them to her. Lucia Moholy’s precise visual records of the school’s architecture – such as Bauhaus Workshop Building from Below. Oblique View (1926) – had been circulated without attribution for years in order to promote Bauhaus aesthetics. In fact, 49 of her prints appeared uncredited in the catalogue accompanying MoMA’s exhibition Bauhaus, 1919–1928, which was mounted in 1938 with Gropius’s input.

As part of her legal efforts to reclaim the negatives, Lucia wrote, “Everybody, except myself, have used, and admit to having used my photographs […] and often also without mentioning my name. Everyone – except myself – have derived advantages from using my photographs, either directly, or indirectly, in a number of ways, be it in cash or prestige, or both.”

Her claim was ultimately successful, leading to the return of 230 extant negatives in 1957. However, the acknowledgement of her influence – both as a collaborator in László Moholy-Nagy’s photographic experiments, and as an agent in the construction of Bauhaus visual identity – remains an ongoing project.

Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography “Lucia Moholy,” on the MoMA website 2020 [Online] Cited 31/03/2026

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Olive Cotton Girl with mirror (1938, below); Teacup ballet (1935 printed 1992, below); Shasta daisies (1937 printed 1992, below); at second right, Dora Maar Fashion study (c. 1936, below); and at right, Untitled (Study of Beauty (1936, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Olive Cotton’s Girl with mirror (1938, below); Teacup ballet (1935 printed 1992, below); Shasta daisies (1937 printed 1992, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) 'Girl with mirror' 1938 (installation view)

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Girl with mirror (installation view)
1938
Gelatin silver photograph
31.8 x 29.9cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Olive Cotton created this image while assisting her colleague and then partner Max Dupain on location at beaches around Sydney. According to Cotton, when Dupain was shooting fashion photographs, she had the freedom to create her own images while the model was ‘waiting her turn to be photographed by Max’. Dupain’s camera tripod cast ‘long slanting lines of shadow’ against the sand. While its creation was incidental, this photograph demonstrates Cotton’s eye for composition and her mastery of light and shade, emphasising the graphic elements of the scene.

Wall text from the exhibition

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Girl with mirror
1938
Gelatin silver photograph
31.8 x 29.9cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
© The estate of Olive Cotton

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) 'Teacup ballet' 1935, printed 1992 (installation view)

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Teacup ballet (installation view)
1935, printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
36.0 x 29.2cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Upon purchasing a set of inexpensive cups and saucers to replace the mugs in photographer Max Dupain’s Sydney studio, where she was a studio assistant, Olive Cotton recognised the potential for a dynamic composition. Later describing the handles of the cups as ‘arms akimbo’, Cotton, in her efforts ‘to express a dance theme’, used a spotlight to accentuate shadows, resulting in a ‘ballet-like composition’. Through her deft use of lighting and arrangement of objects, the teacups appear transformed, as if they are ballerinas performing onstage. The image was immediately successful both in Australia and abroad, being included in the London Salon of Photography from September 1935.

Wall text from the exhibition

Olive Cotton (Australia 1911-2003) 'Teacup ballet' 1935, printed 1992

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Teacup ballet
1935, printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
36.0 x 29.2cm (image)
ed. 21/50
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
© The estate of Olive Cotton

Olive Cotton (Australia 1911-2003) 'Shasta daisies' 1937, printed 1992 (installation view)

Olive Cotton (Australia 1911-2003)
Shasta daisies
1937, printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
38.2 x 28.1cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

‘The camera can do more than merely record an unchanging picture of a subject … The lighting, the relation of the various objects to the shape of picture and many other factors can be changed by the individual, and this is where discernment and personality come into the picture as it were.’

~ Olive Cotton

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Shasta daisies
1937, printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
38.2 x 28.1cm (image)
ed. 8/25
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992
© The estate of Olive Cotton

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) 'Fashion study' c. 1936 (installation view)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Fashion study (installation view)
c. 1936
Gelatin silver photograph
Proposed acquisition

Dora Maar (French 1907-1997) 'Untitled (Study of beauty)' 1936 (installation view)

Dora Maar (French 1907-1997)
Untitled (Study of beauty) (installation view)
1936
Gelatin silver photograph
33.0 x 24.1cm
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021

Dora Maar (French 1907-1997)
Untitled (Study of beauty)
1936
Gelatin silver photograph
33.0 x 24.1cm
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
© Dora Maar / Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia

Dora Maar, a French photographer, poet and painter, established her commercial studio in Paris in 1932, quickly gaining recognition as a portrait and fashion photographer. While known as one of Pablo Picasso’s muses and the inspiration for his Weeping woman paintings, Maar was an influential artist in her own right, painting well into her eighties. As a photographer, Maar developed an elegant and experimental style, drawing on her knowledge of avant-garde photography and the ideas underpinning Surrealism. In this work, an advertising commission for the haircare brand Dolfar, Maar explores the ideal of beauty, creating an image in which the subject appears like a classical statue come to life.

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Featuring some of the most iconic images from the twentieth century by the likes of Diane Arbus, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Dorothea Lange, Olive Cotton and many more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the images, lives and stories of more than 70 influential artists working between 1900 to 1975. Opening 28 November 2025 at NGV International, the exhibition features more than 300 rare and innovative photographs, prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines from the NGV Collection – with 170+ recently acquired and 130+ on display for the very first time.

Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, fashion photography, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light explores the work of the artists against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events – from Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires. From historic images of the suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond, the exhibition reveals how these artists have used key photographic styles to capture, reflect and challenge the world around them. This exhibition highlights the rich networks of exchange of information, ideas and support between many of these women across the world.

The exhibition showcases the work of prominent and leading figures of photography, as well as drawing attention to lesser-known artists. Featured artists include Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Tokiwa Toyoko, Francesca Woodman, Yamazawa Eiko, among many others.

The exhibition reflects a recent strategic collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography collection. Many of the new works on display – including by artists previously unrepresented in the NGV Collection – have been acquired with the generous support of the Bowness Family Foundation, who have been involved with the NGV for almost 25 years and who also generously contributed to the publication. There have also been significant works joining the NGV Collection with the generous support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, as well as Professor Wang Gungwu, and Joy Anderson.

Highlight works include an outstanding selection of photographs by Dora Maar, including fashion photographs, social documentary images and portraiture. Dora Maar was a sophisticated artist and image-maker and deeply connected within the avant-garde community. In 1935-36, she created these studio images of Pablo Picasso, with whom she was romantically involved. In these portraits, on display in the exhibition, Maar turns the gaze of her camera onto Picasso, offering the viewer a candid insight into their private domestic lives.

A further highlight is Dorothea Lange’s instantly recognisable work, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936, commissioned as part of a campaign by the US government Farm Security Administration to bring recognition to the impacts of the Great Depression on working class families. Lange created several photographs of the woman, Florence Owens Thompson, and her children. This image, focussed on Thompson’s seemingly anxious face, became a poignant symbol of the times.

In the 1930s German-born Ilse Bing became known as the ‘Queen of Leica’ for her use of the small, hand-held camera which allowed her the flexibility to shoot from dizzying angles, create contrasts of light, shade and shadows, and dynamic perspectives. The exhibition will feature Bing’s iconic modernist image, Self-portrait 1931, showing the artist’s reflection, of herself and her camera, accompanied by her side profile in another angled mirror demonstrating the significance of the camera in her image-making.

Inner-city Melbourne of the 1970s is brought to life in the photographs of Ponch Hawkes, offering audiences a first-hand glimpse into the changing social dynamics and sense of activism of the period. Photographs on display include her documentation of life in communal houses, of urban graffiti calling for childcare and social housing, of celebrations for Gay Pride Week, and documentation of the Women’s Theatre Group, performing outdoors beneath a Women’s Liberation banner.

Also on display is Olive Cotton’s iconic Teacup ballet, 1935, a wonderful study of light, shadows and forms. Cotton had purchased an inexpensive set of cups and saucers to replace the mugs in the Sydney studio of photographer Max Dupain, where she was studio assistant. Realising their potential for a dynamic arrangement, she photographed the teacups with elongated shadows, creating a striking composition of shadow play that Cotton described as “ballet-like”.

American artist Lee Miller moved to Paris in 1929, where she became Man Ray’s photographic student, then colleague, model and lover – all the while creating her own extraordinary photographs. On display in the exhibition is Miller’s portrait of Man Ray, taken in 1931 in Miller’s Paris apartment depicting her subject framed tightly, his gaze diverted.

Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, better known by their adopted alliterative pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, were an artist duo who radically questioned the constraints of gender in their artwork and lives. The pair are represented in this exhibition with the artist’s book Aveux non Avenus, 1930. In this highly experimental book, featuring ‘essay-poems’ and collaborative photomontages, which feature self-portraits of Cahun with a shaved head and androgynous appearance and dress, Cahun and Moore raise powerful questions about identity, sexuality and self-expression.

Las Lavanderas (The Washerwomen) c. 1940, also on display, is one of several photographs created by Mexican artist Lolo Álvarez Bravo of women washing their clothes at a waterfront. The sun casts long shadows from a nearby structure, transforming the scene of everyday labour into one of dynamic angles and forms. Bravo is known for her passionate documentation of the peoples and cultures of Mexico, through such dynamic and vivid compositions.

Parliamentary Secretary for Creative Industries, Katie Hall, said: “This exhibition will celebrate the work of women photographers who documented the world around them from vastly different places and perspectives. The NGV continues to present exhibitions that show us life through different lenses and introduce us to creative trailblazers from around the world.”

Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: “Like all collecting institutions globally, the NGV has been actively looking at historically underrepresented areas of our collection, including gender. Though this is a long and ongoing process, this exhibition offers an opportunity to celebrate and share the more than 300 works by women photographers, many of which we’ve collected since 2020. We hope this exhibition gives audiences the chance to discover the work of lesser-known photographers or deepen their appreciation of familiar ones.”

Professor Simon Tormey, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin, said: “This important exhibition foregrounds the often-overlooked contributions of women to the evolution of photography across the twentieth century. At Deakin, where we teach and research across Creative Arts and Photography, we are proud to support initiatives that celebrate artistic innovation and also challenge historical silences. This collaboration with the NGV exemplifies our commitment to the transformative power of the arts.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by a beautifully illustrated publication exploring the images, lives and stories of women photographers from the pivotal period of 1900-1975. The publication will feature new essays from NGV Curators and international contributors including leading American art historian, critic and curator Abigail Solomon-Godeau; Emeritus Professor at the ANU School of Art & Design Helen Ennis; World Press Photo lead curator Amanda Maddox; photographer and writer Carla Williams, and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum curator Yamada Yuri. Women Photographers 1900–1975 will be co-published with Hatje Cantz in Berlin.

This exhibition coincides with the fifty-year anniversary of the first International Women’s Year in 1975, as declared by the United Nations.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Ilse Bing Salut de Schiaparelli (1934, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Salut de Schiaparelli 1934 (installation view)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Salut de Schiaparelli (installation view)
1934
Gelatin silver photograph
49.5 x 39.7cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998, United States 1941-1998) 'Salut de Schiaparelli' 1934

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Salut de Schiaparelli
1934
Gelatin silver photograph
49.5 x 39.7cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022

Upon moving from Frankfurt to Paris in 1930, Ilse Bing established a studio known for producing innovative portraits and fashion photography. This photograph was commissioned by fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli for a new
perfume called Salut. Bing placed a scattered bouquet of lilies in the composition to represent the perfume’s scent. The image’s dreamlike quality is enhanced by Bing’s experimental use of the solarisation technique, which reverses the tones in a photograph.

Wall text from the exhibition

At Play: The Studio, Light and Shadows

In the 1920s, amid the aftermath of the First World War, many European avant-garde artists experimented with photography to actively ‘see’ the world anew. So-called New Photography emerged during this period, with images characterised by the play of light and shadow, extreme vantage points and the use of sharp focus. These techniques aimed to disorient the viewer – familiar scenes were made to feel unfamiliar.

Artists embracing these styles predominantly worked in studios, creating experimental images that explored the principles of New Photography. Some images were made purely as artistic exercises, while others demonstrate the use of experimental techniques for commercial purposes. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a great demand for modern photography in advertising, newspapers, catalogues and picture magazines. With the wide dissemination of these media, the influence of New Photography travelled far beyond Europe, and can be seen in works by Olive Cotton in Sydney, Lola Álvarez Bravo in Mexico City and Annemarie Heinrich in Buenos Aires.

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at second left, Ilse Bing Salut de Schiaparelli (1934, above); at second right, Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005) Eva’s apple (La manzana de Eva) 1953; and at right, ringl+pit (German, active 1930-1933, Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern) Komol (1931 printed 1984, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

ringl+pit, Berlin Grete Stern (Argentine born Germany, 1904-1999) Ellen Auerbach (American born Germany, 1906-2004) 'Komol' 1931, printed 1984 (installation view)

ringl+pit, Berlin
Grete Stern (Argentine born Germany, 1904-1999)
Ellen Auerbach (American born Germany, 1906-2004)
Komol
1931, printed 1984
Gelatin silver photograph
34.4 x 23.3cm (image)
35.2 x 24.0cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Named after the childhood nicknames of Grete Stern (Ringl) and Ellen Auerbach (Pit), photography studio ringl+pit was sought after for its highly innovative and experimental work. The studio’s work broke free from feminine ideals and expectations. Komol, an unconventional advertisement for hair dye, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the shallow nature of commercialised femininity. ringl+pit’s playful productions speak to the safety of the artists’ shared space, described by art historian Elizabeth Otto as ‘a haven of humour and honesty for the photographers in contrast to the outside world that does not understand them’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left in the bottom image, Grace Lock The fly (c. 1960s); Ruth Bernhard Two Leaves (1952); and at right, Imogen Cunningham Agave design I (1920s, printed 1979)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Design I
1920s, printed 1979
Gelatin silver photograph
32.6 x 25.6cm (image and sheet)
49.6 x 39.8cm (support)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979

Image from the Art Blart archive

Following the birth of her three sons, Imogen Cunningham had to close her portrait studio in Seattle. However, she found a way to continue taking pictures at home. According to Cunningham, she would spend the afternoons while her children napped photographing her plants, ‘because I couldn’t get out anywhere, and I had a garden’. In this close-up image of an agave, Cunningham focuses on the plant’s sharp lines and the play of light. The image is recognised as one of the most iconic abstracted avant-garde images of the early twentieth century. Soon after its creation, the image was included in the 1929 contemporary exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart, Germany.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing two photographs by Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) with at second right, Tribute to Salvador Toscano (1949 printed 1960s, below) New acquisition; and at right, The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) (c. 1950, below) New acquisition
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Lola Álvarez Bravo Tribute to Salvador Toscano (1949, printed 1960s) New acquisition; and at right, Lola Álvarez Bravo The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) (c. 1950, below) New acquisition
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisitions

Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) 'The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) c. 1950 (installation view)

Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993)
The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver photograph on cardboard
18.9 × 22.3cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

Throughout her career, Lola Álvarez Bravo took several photographs of women washing their clothes at the waterfront. In this image, a large shadow from a nearby structure is cast over a group of women, children and dogs. The shadow appears to symbolise Mexico’s industrial growth and post-revolution transformation. Álvarez Bravo implemented modernist photography techniques such as high contrasts and extreme viewpoints to transform scenes of everyday labour into graphic compositions of dynamic angles and forms.

Wall text from the exhibition

Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993)
The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver photograph on cardboard
18.9 x 22.3cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

New acquisition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at left, Barbara Morgan (United States, 1900-1992) Hearst over the people (c. 1938-1939, below) New acquisition; at second left, Barbara Morgan City shell (1938, printed 1972); at second right, Margaret Bourke-White Campbell’s Soup No. 6 (1935, below) New acquisition; and at right, Margaret Bourke-White Beach accident, Coney Island (1952, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) 'Hearst over the people' c. 1938-1939 (installation view)

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
Hearst over the people (installation view)
c. 1938-1939
Gelatin silver photograph
26.3 x 32.4cm (image)
26.8 x 33.0cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

After moving to New York in 1930 with her photojournalist husband, Barbara Morgan turned to photography after a decade devoted to painting and printmaking. While her children were sleeping, she would experiment with avant-garde photographic techniques. In this photomontage, the artist set out to ‘visually distort the consummate distorter’: media mogul William Randolph Hearst, notorious for his sensationalist news empire. Hearst’s grinning face is stretched into a sinister omniscient octopus, its tentacles writhing into crowds of workers on the street. First published in the influential left-wing magazine New Masses, this is a compelling depiction of psychological infiltration. It also, perhaps, proposes Hearst as an effigy of authority for agitators to protest.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Berenice Abbott New York at Night (1932); at second left, Berenice Abbott Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25 (1938, below); and at right, Berenice Abbott Park Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, Manhattan, October 8 (1936)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Cities, Industries, Technologies

The early decades of the twentieth century came to be known as the Machine Age due to rapidly increasing automation, technological change and mass production. As cities industrialised, photographers responded by capturing buildings, workers and crowds.

Germaine Krull’s photographs from the 1920s and 1930s exemplify her dynamic, modern vision. Reflecting on the inspiration she gained from photographing cranes and bridges in Europe, which eventually led to the production of her famed 1928 photobook Métal, she said: “These steel giants revealed something to me that made me love photography again. From this moment onward, I began to SEE things as the eye sees them, and it is at this moment that photography was born for me.”

Machine Age artists were also experimenting with photomontage, a method that offered radical new perspectives and challenged conventional ways of seeing. Photomontage emerged in direct response to industrial development, as cities expanded and everyday life transformed. Barbara Morgan’s images reflect on the tension between the natural and the constructed. In contrast, Varvara Stepanova and Aleksandr Rodchenko embraced the tools of mass production, combining design, image-making and progressive printing techniques to create graphic publications that promoted the Soviet Union’s industrial power to a wide audience.

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25' 1938 (installation view)

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25 (installation view0
1938
Gelatin silver photograph
23.9 x 19.3cm (image)
25.3 x 20.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25
1938
Gelatin silver photograph
23.9 x 19.3cm (image)
25.3 x 20.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021

New acquisition

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Park Avenue and 39th Street, New York' 1936

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Park Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, Manhattan, October 8
1936
Gelatin silver photograph
19.3 x 24.3cm (image) (irreg)
20.2 x 25.2cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Margaret Bourke-White Campbell’s Soup No. 6 (1935, below); Margaret Bourke-White Beach accident, Coney Island (1952, below); and at right, Berenice Abbott New York at night (1932 printed c. 1975, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) 'Campbell's Soup #6' 1935 (installation view)

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Campbell’s Soup #6 (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver print
17.3 × 24.1cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
© Public Domain
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Campbell’s Soup #6
1935
Gelatin silver print
17.3 × 24.1cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Public Domain

New acquisition

Margaret Bourke-White became widely known for her documentation of workers and scenes of modern industry. Her photography was used on the cover of the first issue of Fortune magazine in 1930, and on the first photographically illustrated cover of Life in 1936. Bourke-White often documented aspects of the Machine Age, contrasting machines and human labourers. Taken in a factory owned by Campbell’s, a major American canned-food company established in 1869, this photograph captures part of the canning process. Bourke-White’s framing, which does not show the worker’s face, amplifies the dominance of the machine. The image first featured as a commission for a local food magazine alongside the caption ‘tangled and tricky, spaghetti defeats the mechanic’.

Wall text from the exhibition

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Beach accident, Coney Island
1952
Gelatin silver photograph
35.2 x 27.9cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1973
Public domain

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'New York at night' 1932, printed c. 1975 (installation view)

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
New York at night
1932, printed c. 1975
Gelatin silver photograph
34.1 x 26.1cm (image and sheet)
49.8 x 40.0cm (support)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of an anonymous donor in memory of Rosa Zerfas (1896-1983), 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

This photograph of the illuminated buildings of New York is the result of a fifteen-minute exposure taken from high up in the Empire State Building. The idea of documenting a changing metropolis recalls the project of pioneering French photographer Eugène Atget, who recorded Paris as it transitioned from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Berenice Abbott had befriended Atget through fellow American émigré artist Man Ray, for whom she worked as a darkroom assistant after moving to Paris in 1921. Atget’s influence on Abbott was profound: on her return to New York in 1929 she focused on documenting the city’s civic spaces and architecture.

Wall text from the exhibition

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
New York at Night
1932
Gelatin silver print
12 7/8 x 10 9/16″ (32.7 x 26.9cm)

Photograph from the Art Blart archive

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Changing New York' 1939 (installation view)

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Changing New York
1939
Artist’s book: half-tone and letterpress text, blue cloth cover, photographic dust jacket
1st edition
Purchased NGV Foundation 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

In her funding proposal for the photobook Changing New York, Berenice Abbott described her desire to capture the ‘spirit’ of the city, driven by the realisation that ‘the tempo of the metropolis is not of eternity, or even time, but of the vanishing instant’. The images in the photobook are accompanied by texts written by Abbott’s partner, art critic Elizabeth McCausland. However, recent research has revealed that Abbott and McCausland’s original intentions for the book were significantly different to what was ultimately published, included alternate texts and a more innovative interplay between words and images.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) 'Fort Peck Dam, Montana' Front cover, 'Life' magazine, first issue, November 1936 (left); Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) 'Fort Peck Dam, Montana' Front cover, 'Life' magazine, first issue, November 1936, 'Salesman's edition' (second left); Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) 'Fort Peck Dam, Montana' reproduced on front cover, Life magazine, tenth anniversary issue, 25 November 1946 (right)

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Fort Peck Dam, Montana
Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936
Published by Time Inc.
Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text
Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Fort Peck Dam, Montana
Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936, ‘Salesman’s edition’
Published by Time Inc.
Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text
Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Fort Peck Dam, Montana
Reproduced on front cover, Life magazine, tenth anniversary issue, 25 November 1946
Published by Time Inc.
Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text
Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisitions

When the American publication Life was purchased by Henry Luce in 1936, it was transformed into a photographic news magazine. Its aim was to let its readers ‘see’ the world. Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White had preciously worked with Luce at Fortune magazine, and a year later he sent Bourke-White to the Soviet Union as the first official foreign photographer allowed to create images of Soviet industry. Later, she was the first accredited woman photographer assigned to photograph the effects of the Second World War.

In 1936 Life magazine gave Margaret Bourke-White the brief of seeking out something ‘grand’ and aspirational at the chain of dams being built at the Columbia River basin. The dams were being built to stimulate the economy as the United States grappled with the devastating effects of the Great Depression. The resulting photograph was selected for the first cover of the relaunched Life magazine. An image of modern industry, the composition emphasises the graphic forms and patterns created by the bases of the elevated spillway. The pillars seem to repeat endlessly, overshadowing two workers dwarfed by the enormous construction. Bourke-White’s image is considered an iconic representation of the Machine Age.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

New acquisitions

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) 'Fort Peck Dam, Montana'
Front cover, 'Life' magazine, first issue, November 1936

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879-1962) Hammer in bloom 1940s New acquisition; at second left, Germaine Krull The Eiffel Tower (c. 1928, below); at third left, Germaine Krull At the Galeries Lafayette c. 1930 New acquisition; at centre, Bea Maddock Square (1972, below); at third right, Ilse Bing Champs de Mars (1931 printed 1994, below) New acquisition; at second right, Heather George The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross (c. 1966 printed 1978, below); and at right, Olive Cotton Radio telescope, Parkes (1964)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Germaine Krull (Dutch born Germany, 1897-1985) 'The Eiffel Tower' c. 1928 (installation view)

Germaine Krull (Dutch born Germany, 1897-1985)
The Eiffel Tower (installation view)
c. 1928
Gelatin silver photograph
17.0 x 24.3cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

New acquisition

Germaine Krull (Dutch born Germany, 1897-1985)
The Eiffel Tower
c. 1928
Gelatin silver photograph
17.0 x 24.3cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022

New acquisition

Germaine Krull photographed industrial forms, political upheaval and modern life. Trained in Munich, she opened a portrait studio in 1919, relocating to Paris in 1926. Three years later, Krull’s photographs were included in the renowned 1929 exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart, Germany, the first international exhibition of modernist photography. During the 1920s the Eiffel Tower became a symbol of modernity for many artists, including Krull. In this image, she reimagines the visual language of the man-made structure, highlighting both
the beauty and functionality of the famous landmark. Krull led a peripatetic life across four continents, focusing on photojournalism in South-East Asia after the Second World War and later living among Tibetan monks.

Wall text from the exhibition

Bea Maddock (Australian, 1934-2016)
'Square' 1972 (installation view)

Bea Maddock (Australian, 1934-2016)
Square
1972
Photo-etching and etching
46.2 × 36.7cm (image) 49.0 × 39.4cm (plate) 76.0 × 56.8cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1973
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

In the 1970s, Australian artist Bea Maddock embraced the photo-etching process, which incorporates pen and ink. She regularly used found images as the basis for these works. In Square, Maddock overlaid an image of people in a crowd, taken from ‘a book on movement of people in cities’, with a grid structure. As she said, “The actual grid comes from the windows in the National Gallery School, Victorian College of the Arts … the windows had little grills on them … and so they got drawn in because that’s how I saw the world – through those windows.”

Wall text from the exhibition

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'Champs de Mars' 1931, printed 1994 (installation view)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Champs de Mars (installation view)
1931, printed 1994
Gelatin silver photograph
21.9 x 33.1cm (image) 27.6 x 35.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Champs de Mars
1931, printed 1994
Gelatin silver photograph
21.9 x 33.1cm (image) 27.6 x 35.3cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022

Taken atop the Eiffel Tower, this image sees Ilse Bing turn her lightweight 35 mm Leica camera downwards, photographing the people and bustling city below. The distance created by this dizzying viewpoint reduces the scene to a pattern of shapes and forms. Images such as these were characteristic of a ‘new way of seeing’ that was adopted by avant-garde photographers during the interwar period.

Wall text from the exhibition

Heather George (Australian, 1907-1983)
The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross
c. 1966, printed 1978
From the Melbourne, old buildings and new projects series (c. 1966)
Gelatin silver photograph
24.0 × 29.1cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1980
Public domain

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at left, Germaine Krull At the Galeries Lafayette c. 1930 New acquisition; at second left, Bea Maddock Square (1972, above); at third left, Ilse Bing Champs de Mars (1931 printed 1994, above) New acquisition; at second right, Heather George The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross (c. 1966 printed 1978, above); and at right, Olive Cotton Radio telescope, Parkes (1964)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) and Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958) 'USSR in construction, no.12 (Parachute issue)' 1935 (installation view)

Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) and Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958)
USSR in construction, no.12 (Parachute issue) (installation views)
1935
Illustrated journal: colour rotogravure, 22 pages with fold-out inserts, lithographic cover
42.3 x 60.3 x 1.2cm (open)
42.3 x 30.3 x 0.4cm (closed)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Prints and Drawings, 2019
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Varvara Stepanova and her husband, fellow artist and designer Aleksandr Rodchenko, were founder-members of the First Working Group of Constructivists. This is a French-language edition of USSR in Construction, a journal that aimed to reflect, through photography, the modernisation of the Soviet Union and to promote its industrial power. The journal employed cutting-edge artistic and printing developments, and this issue was designed by Stepanova and Rodchenko using original ideas around photomontage and page design. Dedicated to the ‘brave Soviet paratroopers’, the so-called ‘Parachute’ issue draws upon the circular form of the opened parachute.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing collotypes from Germaine Krull’s portfolio Métal 1928
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

One of the most significant modernist photobooks of the 1920s, Germaine Krull’s Métal portfolio comprises sixty-four images printed on individual sheets, a title page and a three-page preface by the French writer and journalist Florent Fels. Krull photographed iron structures such as cranes and transport bridges in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseille and Saint-Malo, as well as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Krull showcases the beauty and innovation of the structures, conveying the sense of awe that accompanied the rapid industrialisation of the time. The presentation of the photographs – loose, to be arranged however the viewer chooses – is also radical, allowing for endless interpretations.

Wall text from the exhibition

Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) 'Métal' 1928

Germaine Krull (photographer) Cover design by M. Tchimoukow. 'MÉTAL' cover 1928

Germaine Krull (1897-1985) Image from the portfolio 'MÉTAL' 1928

Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985)
Métal
1928
64 black and white collotype plates, letterpress on paper, black cloth-backed paper-covered board portfolio with ribbons
30.5 x 23.5 x 2.5cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023

Photographs from the Art Blart posting Germaine Krull Métal 1928, December 2018. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Germaine Krull’s 1928 publication Métal is often described as one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century. Interestingly, Métal is not a book in a conventional sense, of sequential pages bound together with a narrative to guide the structure. Rather, when looking through this new acquisition to the NGV Collection you can immediately appreciate its unique design as an object. This dynamic format which, along with the vitality of the photography, has continued to inspire graphic designers, book publishers and artists since its publication almost a century ago.

Métal consists of a folded board cover, with ribbons attached, that acts as a folder for the pages within. The cover, designed by artist Lou Tchimoukow, reproduces one of Krull’s photographs of a detail of machinery on Paris’s Eiffel Tower. This image is overlaid with bold, vertically arranged letters spelling out ‘KRULL’ in a staggered pattern that mimics the lines of the structure beneath. Within the folder are sixty-four unbound plates. Each plate reproduces a photograph by Germaine Krull of industrial forms (and on one occasion, two images to a page) printed as collotypes, as well as the words ‘Krull, Métal’ at the top left, the plate number at the top right, and the publisher’s information ‘A. Calavas, Paris’ at the base. There is also an insert of eight pages (two sheets folded) that includes texts by journalist Florent Fels, and words from Krull herself. …

For Métal, Krull brought together a selection of recent photographs which, as she wrote in the introductory text, were from sites that included the Eiffel Tower, as well as the cranes and transport bridges of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseille and Saint-Malo. Apart from the Eiffel Tower, they are emblematic of new industries and engineering emerging in these European cities in the decade after the end of the First World War and could, at first glance, be read as a tribute to modernity as seen through this rapid industrial development.

The presentation of the photographs, however, disrupts the opportunity for any clear narrative, or interpretation. While they are numbered, Krull’s images are printed without any captions (a radical technique in a photobook for the period). The audience is encouraged to actively engage: they are able to construct their own sequences and visual associations. And the composition of the images is highly varied – some close up and cropped, showing the cogs, bolts and mechanics; some reveal dizzying angles and perspectives; some show clear lines, some are abstracted; the majority are taken outside, some are within a factory; some are printed on the vertical, some on the horizontal; some are the result of multiple exposures, as if to emphasise a sense of movement or energy.

Art historian Professor Kim Sichel writes that Krull constructs an ‘activist narrative’ in Métal: ‘Through narrative techniques that are part taxonomy, part lyrical poem, part vertiginous montage, part Industrial-Age adulation, and by making the whole volume uncomfortable and strange to read, she brings her machine parts to life as they oscillate uneasily throughout the album’.2

The photographs in Métal can be linked to contemporary art movements circulating within Europe, such as the visual language of the ‘New Vision’ styles of photography emerging out of the Bauhaus in Germany, or the clean lines of the ‘New Objectivity’ as demonstrated by photographers, such as Albert Renger-Patzsch. Krull’s photographic vision, however, remains dynamic and unique – it does not follow one clear aesthetic or technical path. Métal is an innovative publication: it is open-ended and allows for endless interpretations.

2/ Kim Sichel, “Montage: Germaine Krull’s Métal,” in Sichel, Kim, Making Strange: The Modernist Photobook in France, Yale University Press, Connecticut, 2020, pp. 33–4.

Maggie Finch. “Germaine Krull Métal portfolio 1928,” on the NGV website 22 Oct 25 [Online] Cited 24/12/2025. This article first appeared in the January–February 2024 edition of NGV Magazine. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

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Exhibition: ‘Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World!’ at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zürich

Exhibition dates: 5th June – 10th October, 2021

Curators: Teresa Gruber and Katharina Rippstein

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993) '"Bjesprisorni", Sleeping boy in Leningrad' 1932 from the exhibition 'Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World!' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zürich, June - Oct, 2021

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
“Bjesprisorni”, Sleeping boy in Leningrad
1932
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

An end of week posting before the exhibition closes.

Ernst A. Heiniger seems to have been a man of much learning and creativity … a polymath.

He belonged to the avant-garde of the Swiss “New Photography” movement in the 1930s; he was a retoucher by trade who taught himself the art of photography. He created one of the first photobooks in Switzerland; he created innovative designs combining photography and graphic design, photo | graphic design, “an entirely novel concept at the time.” He made posters. He started shooting short black and white promotional and documentary films. He taught himself the wide format of Cinemascope and Technicolor film – “previously untested creative tools for Heiniger” – and was hired by Walt Disney to shoot his “edutainment” films all over the world. He was commissioned to produce a 360 degree film for Expo 64 in Lausanne and produced the oldest panorama shots in Switzerland (see video below), and then went on to develop his own 360 degree recording and projection technology in 1965, which was ready for use under the name “Swissorama” at the beginning of the 1980s (see images and film below).

What an artist, what creativity, intelligence and drive. Was there nothing this man couldn’t do!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Fotostiftung Schweiz for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993) 'Bahnhofplatz, Zurich' 1933 from the exhibition 'Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World!' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zürich, June - Oct, 2021

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Bahnhofplatz, Zurich
1933
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Jumping over a crevasse, Bernese Oberland
1933
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Grey and Brown, Puszta (Hungary)
1936
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
White wine star
1939
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Rope team on the Bianco ridge, Grisons
1941
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Fitting
1942
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Water drop
1943
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (1909-1993) belonged to the avant-garde of the Swiss “New Photography” movement in the 1930s. A photo retoucher by trade, he taught himself the art of photography autodidactically. He quickly developed a keen sense for contemporary and modern aesthetics and soon became one of the first photographers to be admitted to the Swiss Werkbund (SWB). After this initial spark to his career, Heiniger constantly took on new challenges and continued to do pioneering work. In 1936 he created Puszta-Pferde (“Horses in Hungary”), one of the first modern photobooks in Switzerland. He worked with well-known graphic artists such as Heiri Steiner, Herbert Matter and Josef Müller-Brockmann and created innovative designs by combining photography and graphic design, an entirely novel concept at the time. In the 1950s, Heiniger travelled the world as a documentary filmmaker for Walt Disney – two of his short films were awarded an Oscar. He later created Switzerland’s first 360 degree film for Expo 64 in Lausanne.

Even though Ernst A. Heiniger’s visual worlds were admired by a broad public in his day, his name is still largely absent from the canon of Swiss photographic history. In 1986, he left Switzerland determined never to return and lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1993. Since then, the Fotostiftung Schweiz has sought to return his photographic estate to Switzerland – which it finally accomplished in 2014. The exploration and processing of his archive provide the basis for the first comprehensive retrospective of this creative visual designer. The exhibition Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World! shows object and nature photographs, photobooks, posters, films, making-of pictures and documentaries that situate his work within the history of photography. His 360 degree film Rund um Rad und Schiene (“Magic of the Rails”) – the SBB’s attraction at Expo 64 in Lausanne – has been recreated as an all-around projection. Ernst A. Heiniger’s diverse photographic and cinematic oeuvre was always at the cutting edge of technology and oscillates between cool perfection and sensual closeness to nature.

New Photography and the Swiss Werkbund

In 1929, at the age of twenty, Ernst A. Heiniger set up his own business as a positive retoucher. In the same year, the exhibition Film und Foto (FiFo) by the German Werkbund took place at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. The title of the exhibition was to be emblematic of Heiniger’s further career, as the two camera-based media, film and photography, defined his entire artistic output. At the time, the international touring exhibition was considered a manifesto for a modern visual aesthetic. The terms “Neues Sehen” (New Vision) and “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity) were used to describe those avant-garde tendencies that emphasised genuinely photographic means of design. The characteristics of the new aesthetic included sharpness of image, attention to detail, unusual perspectives such as high and low angle shots, (abstracting) close-ups or multiple exposures. The precise capture of structures and forms was also one of the typical qualities of this “New Photography”, as it became known in Switzerland. After only a short period as a self-employed retoucher, Ernst A. Heiniger decided to learn how to take photographs himself. He made his customers an offer: for the same price, they would receive a new, better photograph instead of a retouched one. Inspired by visits to exhibitions and publications such as Werner Gräff’s Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (“Here Comes the New Photographer”, 1929), he adapted the aesthetics of the international avant-garde and became one of the pioneers of New Photography in Switzerland. His achievements as a photographer did not go unnoticed by the Swiss Werkbund (SWB), which campaigned for the advancement of “New Photography in Switzerland” and organised an exhibition with this title in 1932. Heiniger was represented with several pictures at the exhibition and was one of the first photographers to be admitted to the SWB Zurich in 1933.

Ernst A. Heiniger book covers

Photobooks

In 1936, Ernst A. Heiniger ventured into a new medium – the photobook. For his first essayistic photobook Puszta-Pferde (“Horses in Hungary”), he travelled to Hungary to take pictures of the wild horses of the Pannonian Steppe over the course of several weeks. While designing the book, he experimented freely with his photographic material and composed lively and varied photo pages. In 1937, the book was published in high-quality rotogravure by the Zurich publishing house Fretz & Wasmuth. With a total (German) print run of 23,000 copies, it was a great success and showed for the first time that Ernst A. Heiniger was not merely an aloof representative of avant-garde photography, but also had a talent for inspiring a wider audience with his pictures.

Heiniger was able to build on this success with his next two books Tessin (“Ticino”, 1941) and Viertausender (“Four-Thousanders”, 1942). Both were produced during the Second World War against the backdrop of closed borders and a revival of sentimental homeland imagery. In the context of “spiritual national defence”, the “Heimatbuch”, a genre of books painting an idealised image of Alpine nature and culture, was encouraged by the authorities as a means to inspire the moral uplift of a beleaguered nation. For Heiniger, however, high alpine landscape photography was also a fresh opportunity to translate a subject he was passionate about into book form. The overly romantic transfiguration of the local landscape was kept in check by the fact that he remained true to his detached, objective style. With a firm belief in the documentary power of photography, he wanted to convey the experience that was revealed to the alpinist upon reaching a mountain peak. The many enthusiastic book reviews give an indication of the entertaining, escapist potential of his books in an age when a destructive war was raging outside Switzerland’s borders.

Heiri Steiner (Swiss, 1906-1983) (designer)
Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993) (photographer)
Grindewald poster
1935

Heiri Steiner (Swiss, 1906-1983) (designer)
Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993) (photographer)
Bally Shoes poster
1936

'Telefon poster' (1942) (installation view)

Installation view of the exhibition Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World!’ at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zürich showing at right, Telefon poster (1942)

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Telefon poster
1942
Poster
128 x 90.5cm (50.4 x 35.6 in.)

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
World Exhibition of Photography Lucerne poster
1952

Photo|graphic design

The medium of photography experienced a boom in the 1930s in the form of printed images. The quality standards of the printing trade were high in Switzerland, and photography was increasingly used for magazine illustrations, poster designs and commercial art. Important innovators in typography and graphic design such as Max Bill, Anton Stankowski or Jan Tschichold resided in Zurich; Ernst A. Heiniger worked in a creative and innovative environment. Under the terms “Fotografik” or “Typofoto”, photography entered into a new kind of combination with graphic and typographic elements. The progressive, neo-objective aesthetics of New Photography was ideally suited to applications in the field of advertising. Heiniger supplied images for well-known graphic artists such as Herbert Matter, Richard Paul Lohse and Josef Müller-Brockmann and also practised graphic design himself. From 1934 to 1939, he managed a studio for photography and graphic art on St. Annagasse in Zurich together with Heiri Steiner. As a duo with Steiner, and later as a solo artist, he designed visionary posters that still have a timeless and modern effect today.

Ernst A. Heiniger Das Buch vom Telephon book cover

“Pro Telephon” and first films

After parting company with Heiri Steiner, Ernst A. Heiniger was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for a loyal client that was open to modern advertising. The Swiss telecommunications company PTT had launched a campaign in 1927 to popularise the telephone in Switzerland. Heiniger worked for them as a photographer and graphic designer throughout the war and beyond. From 1942, he also started making his first short promotional films for “Pro Telephon”, and in 1946 he was behind the camera for the 20-minute documentary Sül Bernina (CH, 1948). The film uses impressive scenes and modernist imagery to show how the heavy telephone cable was joined together from the north and south at the Bernina Pass to replace the telephone poles that were susceptible to interference.

Ernst A. Heiniger World Exhibition of Photography 1952 Lucern, Switzerland catalogue

The World Exhibition of Photography in Lucerne

The year 1952 marked a turning point in Heiniger’s life and career. The World Exhibition of Photography was held in Lucerne – a universally oriented exhibition that aimed to show the medium’s areas of application as comprehensively as possible. Heiniger was involved in the major event in various capacities: as a graphic designer, he won the competition for the poster design, and as an expert in the field of object photography, he was entrusted with the curatorial task of organising the “Sachwiedergabe” (“object reproduction”) section. His own pictures were omnipresent at the exhibition. A prominent visitor recognised Heiniger’s talent, and in the summer of 1952 he and Walt Disney met for the first time at the Hotel Palace in Lucerne. Disney cut right to the chase and offered Heiniger a job as a cameraman for his planned documentary film about Switzerland. While working with the American media company, Ernst A. Heiniger met his future wife Jean Feaster. After their marriage in 1953, the two became an inseparable team, not only in private but also professionally.

Ernst A. Heiniger Masterpieces of Photography 1952

Masterpieces

In addition to the platform offered to Ernst A. Heiniger at the Lucerne exhibition, he produced an illustrated book in the same year to draw attention to his photographic work. He edited a portfolio of sorts comprising 52 of his best independent and applied works that he had produced since the 1930s. The publication appeared in two languages; he called the German edition Das Jahr des Fotografen (“The Year of the Photographer”). On each double-page spread he arranged two pictures that are characterised by contrasts in form or content, but have something in common in their juxtaposition, which the lyricist Albert Ehrismann pondered in the captions. The English edition contains picture commentary by the British writer R.A. Langford and bears the self-confident title Masterpieces of Photography. The estate includes almost all the original prints of these Masterpieces, which were used as print templates at the time. The objects laminated on photo mounting board form the core of the exhibition and provide an insight into Heiniger’s appraisal of his own work as the focus of his activity began to shift from the static to the moving image.

Films for Walt Disney

In the early 1950s, Walt Disney launched the documentary film series People & Places for the supporting programme of his animated films – an anthology of half-hour short films designed to introduce foreign countries and peoples to American audiences. One of these countries was Switzerland. While searching for a suitable cameraman, Disney became aware of Ernst A. Heiniger. Switzerland (CH, 1955) was to be the third film in the series and also the first to be shot in Cinemascope. The pronounced wide format of Cinemascope and Technicolor film were new, previously untested creative tools for Heiniger. But he never shied away from a challenge and quickly learned to work with the format and colour, and so he was immediately rehired for further films by Walt Disney Productions. From 1955 to 1957, Jean and Ernst A. Heiniger travelled extensively in Asia. They shot two new People & Places films in Japan: Ama Girls (USA, 1958) follows the lives of a fishing family from Inatori with a special focus on the unusual profession of the 18-year-old daughter, who earns her living as a seaweed diver. For the second film Japan (USA, 1960), the Heinigers documented Japanese festivals, traditional crafts and a Shinto wedding. Disney’s so-called “edutainment” films were designed to inform and entertain a broad cinema audience. Although Walt Disney gave the camera teams travelling all over the world for him a great deal of creative freedom, the films were eventually edited according to commercial criteria under the supervision of his producer Ben Sharpsteen. In 1958, the Heinigers spent another whole year in the Colorado River area for the film project Grand Canyon (USA, 1958), a film adaptation of the extremely popular suite of the same name by the composer Ferde Grofé. The short film was shown in 1959 as a supporting film for Sleeping Beauty. In the same year, the two films Ama Girls and Grand Canyon both won an Academy Award (“Oscar”) – one for Best Documentary (Short Subject), the other for Best Live Action Short Film.

The Ernst A. Heiniger Archive contains numerous slides that document the filming of Disney productions or can also be described as stills. The films Ama Girls, Japan, Grand Canyon and the German version of Switzerland were made available for viewing thanks to digital copies from film archives and are also part of the exhibition.

360 degree cinema

After film was plunged into crisis by the spread of television, the industry steadily introduced new film formats to enhance the viewing experience at the cinema. Following the various widescreen formats, Disney’s patented “Circarama” technology set new standards in the 1950s. The system, consisting of a camera and projection display, enabled the capture and reproduction of a full 360 degree angle. In the early 1960s, Ernst A. Heiniger was commissioned by the SBB to produce a 360 degree film for Expo 64 in Lausanne. He was not only responsible for the production, cinematography and direction of the project, but also developed the script for Rund um Rad und Schiene (“Magic of the Rails”, CH, 1964) in cooperation with the client. The 20-minute film was shown every half hour at the Expo in a round auditorium with a diameter of 26.5 metres and a capacity of 1500 people. Around 4 million people had seen the film by the end of the Expo. The Fotostiftung Schweiz is showing this first Swiss 360-degree film, which was restored and digitised in 2014 as part of a Memoriav project, on a smaller scale as a walk-in circular projection.

Despite the success of Magic of the Rails, Heiniger was only partially satisfied with the result; he was bothered by the technical shortcomings of the Circarama system, which did not allow seamless projection. He therefore began developing his own 360 degree recording and projection technology in 1965, which was ready for use under the name “Swissorama” at the beginning of the 1980s. From 1982 to 1984, he used his system to produce the film Impressions of Switzerland (CH, 1984), a total image of Switzerland, which was shown continuously from 1984 to 2002 at the Museum of Transport in Lucerne in a custom-built auditorium.

The exhibition was curated by Teresa Gruber and Katharina Rippstein. The publication Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World! accompanying the exhibition is available from Scheidegger & Spiess. The Ernst A. Heiniger Archive, which is maintained by the Fotostiftung Schweiz, has been comprehensively indexed and digitised and is accessible to the public via an online database: fss.e-pics.ethz.ch.

Press release from the Fotostiftung Schweiz website

The forgotten Swiss Oscars

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Poster “so telephonieren”
1950
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Self-portrait
around 1950
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Ernst A. Heiniger and his wife Jean were inseparable: here they traveled to Japan for a Cinemascope film
around 1956
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Seaweed diver, film scene from ‘Ama Girls’ (USA, 1958)
around 1956
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

A day’s trip west of Tokyo, Ernst A. Heiniger found a place that he imagined: the archaic-looking fishing village of Inatori. He selected a few villagers, arranged them into a family and let them play their “authentic” everyday life. Yukiko – an 18-year-old hairdresser in real life – is one of those divers with special skills in the film. They stay under water for minutes to harvest the coveted seaweed.

The 30-minute film “Ama Girls” won an Oscar in 1959 and spurred Heiniger’s further career. Numerous photographs were taken on the set between filming, such as this shot of the alleged diver who had just emerged from the sea. As a kind of mermaid, she embodies a phantasm: beautiful, mysterious, exotic and aloof.

Fotostiftung Schweiz. “Die Bildkritik – Perlen der Fotostiftung Schweiz,” on the NZZ website 8/9/2021 [Online] Cited 13/09/2021. Translated from the German.

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Women at a festival, Japan
around 1956
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Jean and Ernst A. Heiniger during the shooting of the Cinemasope film “Grand Canyon” (USA, 1958)
1958
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Ernst A. Heiniger with his wife Jean while shooting a Cinemascope film
Nd
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Karl Wolf
Shooting of the Circarama film “Rund um Rad und Schiene”
1963
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Echorama in 360°: Eine Schweizer Zeitreise in die 60er-Jahre und zurück
Echorama in 360°: A Swiss journey through time to the 1960s and back

The oldest panorama shots in Switzerland come from the film “All about wheel and rail” by Ernst A. Heiniger. The recordings amazed the visitors of Expo 64. Discover scenes from the crowd puller here: take a look around Bern’s old town, a dining car with neatly dressed people or a construction site from the 1960s. Recordings from the present also show how cityscapes, technologies and worldviews have changed. With headphones you can dive deeper into the pictures, which are underlaid with news articles from the respective time.

Karl Wolf
The 9-camera system on Heiniger’s Chevrolet: the filmmaker worked hard for the Expo film
around 1963
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

The 9-camera system outdoors

Vicky Schoch
Ernst A. Heiniger showed Walt Disney the site of Expo 64. The two were close friends
1964
SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen

Anonymous
The Circarama Circular Theatre of the SBB at Expo 64 in Lausanne
1964
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

The 360 pioneer

Heiniger, who had a passion for technology, was very much involved in the development of Disney’s “Circarama” system. Creating a circular movie theatre that screened 360° films became one of his dreams. He was able to realise this dream when the Swiss Federal Railways commissioned him to shoot a movie in this format for the Expo 64 in Lausanne. The film All About Wheels and Rails was a huge success. It is allegedly one of Switzerland’s most watched films with almost four million viewers.

Heiniger continued to develop the 360° technology until the end of the 1980s when he launched “Swissorama”, a new-and-improved cylindrical 360° film system. Europeans were sceptical of the system, and when Heiniger moved to Los Angeles with his wife in 1986, he sold it to a US company which marketed it under the new name “Imagine 360”.

His last wide-screen film, Destination Berlin, was due to be screened in a dome cinema near West Berlin’s tourist district, the Ku’damm, but historic events shuttered his project. With German reunification, half of the city, namely East Berlin, was missing from the movie. Audiences stayed away and the film never reached the expected success.

Heiniger’s death

The money he made with the sale of “Swissorama” enabled him to buy a house in the Hollywood Hills, where he lived for the remainder of his life. His death in 1993 went unnoticed in Switzerland where he is still relatively unknown, even though several exhibitions and events have been dedicated to him.

In 1997 the newly established Swiss Photo Foundation organised an exhibition of his work at the Zurich Art Museum, and one of his wide-screen films was shown at the Transportation Museum in Lucerne until 2002. When the Swissorama closed that year, this kind of film disappeared, dashing his dream of creating a worldwide network of 360° cinemas.

Anonymous. “On the trail of photographer and Oscar winner Ernst A. Heiniger,” on the Swissinfo website August 2, 2021 [Online] Cited 13/09/2021.

Books

Puszta horses (Zurich 1936)
The Photo Book of the National Exhibition (Zurich 1939)
Ticino (Zurich 1941)
Four-thousanders. A picture book of the beauty of our Alps (Zurich 1942)
The Year of the Photographer (Zurich 1952)
Grand Canyon, nature and wildlife in 157 colour photos. Kümmerly & Frey Geographischer Verlag, Bern 1971
The Great Book of Jewels (Lausanne 1974)

Filmography

1942: The telephone cable
1943: The telephone set
1944: From wire to cable
1945: The telephone exchange
1948: On the Bernina
1954: Switzerland
1957: Japan
1956-1957: Ama Girls (TV series in 13 parts)
1958: Grand Canyon
1965-1967: Switzerland
1964: All about wheels and rails
1984: Impressions of Switzerland
1988: Shikoku Alive
1989: Destination Berlin

Ernst A. Heiniger (Swiss, 1909-1993)
Self-portrait
1960s
© Fotostiftung Schweiz

Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World! book cover

'Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World!' book pages

Ernst A. Heiniger – Good Morning, World! book pages

Fotostiftung Schweiz
Grüzenstrasse 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zürich)
Phone: +41 52 234 10 30

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotostiftung Schweiz website

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Exhibition: ‘Dora Maar’ at Tate Modern, London

Exhibition dates: 20th November 2019 – 15th March 2020

Curators: Dora Maar is curated by Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Damarice Amao, Assistant Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Amanda Maddox, Associate Curator, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles with Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The Tate Modern presentation is curated by Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator with Emma Jones, Curatorial Assistant, Tate Modern.

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled (Hand-Shell)
1934
Gelatin silver print on paper
401 x 289 mm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais
Image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

What a creative woman. But yet another abused by the ego of a male, that of her lover, Picasso.

Beth Gersh-Nesic observes, “Was Dora Maar’s brilliant career cut short by the typical conflicts facing professional women in the 1930s, and even today? Or was she a victim of Picasso’s psychological abuse, which chipped away at her original confidence? Was she compromised to the point that she only wanted to please the man she loved? According to art historian John Richardson, Dora Maar sacrificed her gifts on the altar of her art god, her idol, Picasso. Based on the early Surrealist photographs we see in her retrospective, one can only wish she hadn’t taken up with Picasso, for it seems she might have achieved far more in her lifetime without him.”

What we can say is that Maar left behind a strong body of photographic work – from fashion and commercial, to restrained, classical formalism with surrealist inflections; from street photography to “the stuff of delirium and nightmare, [which] taps into the unconscious, internalised sublime”, her Portrait of Ubu (1936, below) reminding me strongly of William Blake’s painting The Ghost of a Flea (c. 1819). Ubu is “a ghastly being of indeterminate origin and melancholy aspect… [an idea] something like l’informe, the concept Maar’s lover Georges Bataille coined to describe his fellow-Surrealists’ admiration for all things larval and grotesquely about-to-be.” Ubu is a her dark notion of a street “urchin”.

Her warped photomontages are technical marvels. “”She captures the mysterious,” Caws wrote, “in a combination of the unresolved and the sharply angled. This frequently creates a sense of ambiguity, even menace.” Caws notes that Dora Maar responded to Louis Aragon’s invocation “for each person there is one image to find that will disturb the whole universe.” Maar’s images managed to “disturb and reveal” with a bit of the macabre mixed in.”

But her images are more than a bit of this and a bit of that. They possess a utilitarian feeling in the enunciation of their menace, which makes them all the more effective when impinging on our waking dreams. Susan Sontag notes, “Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognise as modern” (Sontag, On Photography, p. 2). Thicken is the critical word. Maar’s photographs thicken our atmospheric (and mental) miasma, prescient of our modern world full of dark passages: pitch black sewers, fatbergs, drone strikes, bush fire skies, virus, murder and mayhem. In the back of my head. My eyes. Roll, roll, roll. Skewered. Roasted.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Tate Britain for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

The most accomplished examples of Maar’s art are the photomontages of 1935 and 1936. There were already many vaults and arches in her Mont-Saint-Michel pictures; now she took the cloistral galleries of the Orangerie at Versailles, upended them so that they looked like sewers, and populated them with cryptic beings engaged in arcane rituals or dramas. In “The Simulator,” [below] a boy from one of her street photographs is bent backward at an obscene angle; Maar has retouched his eyes so that they roll back in his head toward us, like one of those thrashing hysterics photographed in the nineteenth century. In “29 Rue d’Astorg” (below) – of which Maar made several versions, black-and-white and hand-coloured – a human figure with a curtailed, avian head is seated beneath arches that have been subtly warped in the darkroom.

Brian Dillon. “The Voraciousness and Oddity of Dora Maar’s Pictures,” on The New Yorker website May 21, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

During the 1930s, Dora Maar’s provocative photomontages became celebrated icons of surrealism.

Her eye for the unusual also translated to her commercial photography, including fashion and advertising, as well as to her social documentary projects. In Europe’s increasingly fraught political climate, Maar signed her name to numerous left-wing manifestos – a radical gesture for a woman at that time.

Her relationship with Pablo Picasso had a profound effect on both their careers. She documented the creation of his most political work, Guernica 1937. He painted her many times, including Weeping Woman 1937. Together they made a series of portraits combining experimental photographic and printmaking techniques.

In middle and later life Maar withdrew from photography. She concentrated on painting and found stimulation and solace in poetry, religion, and philosophy, returning to her darkroom only in her seventies.

This exhibition will explore the breadth of Maar’s long career in the context of work by her contemporaries.

Text from the Tate Modern website

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Woman sitting in profile, the bust dressed in a blouse made of tattoo patterns drawn on the photograph
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019, All Rights Reserved

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Child with a Beret
c. 1932
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy VEGAP / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Barcelona, Saleswomen in the Butcher Shop
1933
Silver Gelatin Print
48.7 x 38.8cm
Private Collection
© Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo: © Fotogasull

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Blind Street Peddler, Barcelona
1933
Gelatin silver print
Image: 39.3 x 29.3cm (15 1/2 x 11 9/16 in.)
Gift of David Raymond
The Cleveland Museum of Art
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Street Boy on the Corner of the rue de Genets
1933
Gelatin silver print
Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Richard and Ronay Menschel Fund for the Acquisition of Photographs
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
1934
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 24.3 × 18cm (9 9/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
© Dora Maar Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Gift of David and Marcia Raymond

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Stairwell and Plants in Kew Gardens
1934
Gelatin silver print, ferrotyped
Image: 28 x 24cm (11 x 9 7/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund
The Cleveland Museum of Art
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Pearly King collecting money for the Empire Day
1935
Gelatin silver print
Tate
© Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019, All Rights Reserved

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Carousel at Night
1931-1936
Gelatin silver print, ferrotyped
Image: 25 x 19.8cm (9 13/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund
The Cleveland Museum of Art
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Installation views of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing, in the bottom image, the photographs Untitled (Nude) 1930s (left) and Untitled (Nude) c. 1938 (right)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Assia
1934
Gelatin silver print
26.4 x 19.5cm

This autumn, Tate Modern presents the first UK retrospective of the work of Dora Maar (1907-1997) whose provocative photographs and photomontages became celebrated icons of surrealism. Featuring over 200 works from a career spanning more than six decades, this exhibition shows how Maar’s eye for the unusual also translated to her commercial commissions, social documentary photographs, and paintings – key aspects of her practice which have, until now, remained little known.

Born Henriette Théodora Markovitch, Dora Maar grew up between Argentina and Paris and studied decorative arts and painting before switching her focus to photography. In doing so, Maar became part of a generation of women who seized the new professional opportunities offered by advertising and the illustrated press. Tate Modern’s exhibition will open with the most important examples of these commissioned works. Around 1931, Maar set up a studio with film set designer Pierre Kéfer specialising in portraiture, fashion photography and advertising. Works such as Untitled (Les années vous guettent) c. 1935 – believed to be an advertising project for face cream that Maar made by overlaying two negatives – will reveal Maar’s innovative approach to constructing images through staging, photomontage and collage. Striking nude studies such as that of famed model Assia Granatouroff will also reveal how women photographers like Maar were beginning to infiltrate relatively taboo genres such as erotica and nude photography.

During the 1930s, Maar was active in left-wing revolutionary groups led by artists and intellectuals. Reflecting this, her street photography from this time shot in Barcelona, Paris and London captured the reality of life during Europe’s economic depression. Maar shared these politics with the surrealists, becoming one of the few photographers to be included in the movement’s exhibitions and publications. A major highlight of the show will be outstanding examples of this area of Maar’s practice, including Portrait d’Ubu 1936, an enigmatic image thought to be an armadillo foetus, and the renowned photomontages 29, rue d’Astorg c. 1936 and Le Simulateur 1935. Collages and publications by André Breton, Georges Hugnet, Paul and Nusch Eluard, and Jacqueline Lamba will place Maar’s work in context with that of her inner circle.

In the winter of 1935-1936 Maar met Pablo Picasso and their relationship of around eight years had a profound effect on both their careers. She documented the creation of his most political work Guernica 1937, offering unprecedented insight into his working process. He in turn immortalised her in the motif of the ‘weeping woman’. Together they made a series of portraits that combined experimental photographic and printmaking techniques, anticipating her energetic return to painting in 1936. Featuring rarely seen, privately-owned canvases such as La Conversation 1937 and La Cage 1943, and never-before exhibited negatives from the Dora Maar collection at the Musée National d’art Moderne, the exhibition will shed new light on the dynamic between these two artists during the turbulent wartime years.

After the Second World War, Maar began dividing her time between Paris and the South of France. During this period, she explored diverse subject matter and styles before focusing on gestural, abstract paintings of the landscape surrounding her home. Though these works were exhibited to acclaim in London and Paris into the 1950s, Maar gradually withdrew from artistic circles. As a result, the second half of her life became shrouded in mystery and speculation. The exhibition will reunite over 20 works from this little-known – yet remarkably prolific – period. Dora Maar concludes with a substantial group of camera-less photographs that she made in the 1980s when, four decades after all but abandoning the medium, Maar returned to her darkroom.

Dora Maar is curated by Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Damarice Amao, Assistant Curator, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Amanda Maddox, Associate Curator, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles with Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The Tate Modern presentation is curated by Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator with Emma Jones, Curatorial Assistant, Tate Modern.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue jointly published by Tate and the J. Paul Getty Museum and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

Press release from Tate Britain [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Installation views of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing at second left, Untitled (Study of Beauty) (c. 1931, below)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled (Study of Beauty)
c. 1931
Gelatin silver print
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled (Lee Miller) (multiple exposure)
c. 1933
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled (Mannequin sitting in profile in dress and evening jacket)
c. 1932-1935
Gelatin silver print enhanced with colours
29.9 x 23.8cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre de création industrielle
© ADAGP, Paris, 2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled (Fashion photograph Model star)
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
300 x 200 mm
Collection Therond
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Model in Swimsuit
1936
Gelatin silver on paper
197 x 167 mm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Portrait of Lise Deharme, chez elle devant sa cage a oiseaux
Portrait of Lise Deharme, at home in front of her birdcage
1936
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Publicity Study, Pétrole Hahn
1934-1935
Silver gelatin print on a flexible support in cellulose nitrate
17.6 x 24cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Dist. RMN-GP

Associated with Pierre Kéfer from 1930 to 1934, she collaborated in 1931 on the photographic illustration of the art historian Germain Bazin’s book Le Mont Saint-Michel (1935). She then shared a studio with Brassaï, after which Emmanuel Sougez, the spokesman for the New Photography movement, became her mentor. Her work met the aesthetic criteria of the time: close-ups of flowers and objects, and photograms in the style of Man Ray. She also took portraits, original publicity shots, and fashion and erotic photographs. In 1934, while traveling alone in Spain, Paris and London, she shot a vast number of urban views (posters, shop windows, ordinary people). Both a passionate lover and committed intellectual, she became the mistress of the filmmaker Louis Chavance and of the writer Georges Bataille, whom she met in a left-wing activist group. She signed the Contre-Attaque manifesto and rubbed shoulders with the agitprop artistic group Octobre. A close friend of Jacqueline Lamba, who became Breton’s wife, she was fully involved in the surrealist group, of whose members she made many portraits. At the height of her creativity in 1935-1936, she composed strange and bold photomontages, the most famous being 29, rue d’Astorg and The Simulator (both below). Some of her compositions verge on eroticism, like the photomontage showing fingers crawling out of a shell and sensually digging into the sand (Untitled, 1933-1934, top). She also used her city photographs as backdrops for unsettling scenes: her Portrait of Ubu (1936, below) – in fact the picture of an armadillo foetus – conforms to the surrealists’ fascination for macabre and deformity.

Anne Reverseau. “Dora Maar,” from the Dictionnaire universel des créatrices on the Archives of Women Artists Research & Exhibitions website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Les yeux (The eyes)
c. 1932-1935
Silver print on flexible media
29.5 x 23.5cm
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais
Image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, © ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
1935
Photomontage
232 x 150 mm
Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou (Paris, France)
© Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019, All Rights Reserved

When Maar began her career, the illustrated press was expanding quickly. This created a growing market for experimental photography. Maar embraced this opportunity, exploring the creative potential of staged images, darkroom experiments, collage and photomontage.

Most of Maar’s work had one thing in common: an uncanny atmosphere. Her connection to the surrealists led her to create fantastical images. This included using photomontage to bring together contrasting images and reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.

Unlike many other photomontage creators of this time, Maar did not use photographs taken from illustrated newspapers or magazines. Instead the images often came from her own work, including both street and landscape photography. This experimentation and obvious construction became a defining feature of Maar’s work.

Anonymous text from “Seven Things to Know: Dora Maar,” on the Tate website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing at second left, Arcade (1934, see below)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Arcade
1934
Photomontage

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Danger
1936
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
29 rue d’Astorg
c. 1936
Photograph, hand-coloured gelatin silver print on paper
294 x 244 mm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
The Simulator
1936
Silver gelatin print printed on a carton
27 x 22.2cm (excluding the margin)
Gift from Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach in 1973
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne, Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

Maar’s early photomontages look almost as modish and styled as her fashion work. From a shell resting on sand, a dummy hand protrudes, with delicate fingers and painted nails, just like Maar’s own (see top image). In a way, the image could be by one of many photographers of the period – Cecil Beaton, say, or Angus McBean – who politely surrealised their pictures, as if the artistic movement were merely a visual style. Except: there is something ominously self-involved about this hybrid thing. The shell and hand recall Bataille’s obsessions with crustaceans, mollusks, and orphaned or butchered body parts. The hand rhymes with similar ones in the photographs of Claude Cahun, where they sometimes have masturbatory implications. And what are we to make of the storm-lit, gothic sky that looms over this auto-curious object?

The most accomplished examples of Maar’s art are the photomontages of 1935 and 1936. There were already many vaults and arches in her Mont-Saint-Michel pictures; now she took the cloistral galleries of the Orangerie at Versailles, upended them so that they looked like sewers, and populated them with cryptic beings engaged in arcane rituals or dramas. In “The Simulator,” (above) a boy from one of her street photographs is bent backward at an obscene angle; Maar has retouched his eyes so that they roll back in his head toward us, like one of those thrashing hysterics photographed in the nineteenth century. In “29 Rue d’Astorg” (above) – of which Maar made several versions, black-and-white and hand-coloured – a human figure with a curtailed, avian head is seated beneath arches that have been subtly warped in the darkroom.

Brian Dillon. “The Voraciousness and Oddity of Dora Maar’s Pictures,” on The New Yorker website May 21, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Dora Maar also participated in the Surrealists’ group exhibitions, such as the one at Charles Ratton’s Gallery in 1936, wherein her Portrait of Ubu became the “icon of Surrealism,” according to her biographer Mary Ann Caws in her exceptional book Picasso’s Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar (2000). “She captures the mysterious,” Caws wrote, “in a combination of the unresolved and the sharply angled. This frequently creates a sense of ambiguity, even menace.” (p. 20) Caws notes that Dora Maar responded to Louis Aragon’s invocation “for each person there is one image to find that will disturb the whole universe.” Maar’s images managed to “disturb and reveal” with a bit of the macabre mixed in. (p. 71)

Beth Gersh-Nesic. “Picasso’s Weeping Woman as Artist Instead of Muse: Dora Maar’s Retrospective at Centre Pompidou,” on the Bonjour Paris website July 24, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing Maar’s photographs Portrait of Ubu (1936, left), Untitled (Hand-Shell) (1934, top middle) and Danger (1936, bottom right) Photo: Tate (Andrew Dunkley)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Portrait of Ubu
1936
Silver gelatin print
24 x 18cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

In 1936, at the summit of her celebrity as a photographic artist, Dora Maar showed her picture “Portrait of Ubu” in the International Surrealist Exhibition, at the New Burlington Galleries, London. Named after a scatological, ur-Surrealist play by Alfred Jarry, from 1896, the black-and-white photograph shows a ghastly being of indeterminate origin and melancholy aspect. Maar would never say what the clawed, scaly creature was, nor where she had come across it. Her Ubu has elements of Jarry’s porcine, louse-like original, and, with its doleful eye and drooping ears, it also resembles an ass or an elephant. Scholars generally agree that the monster is in fact an armadillo foetus, preserved in a specimen jar. It is also an idea: something like l’informe, the concept Maar’s lover Georges Bataille coined to describe his fellow-Surrealists’ admiration for all things larval and grotesquely about-to-be.

Brian Dillon. “The Voraciousness and Oddity of Dora Maar’s Pictures,” on The New Yorker website May 21, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing her series of portrait photomontages from the mid-1930s (see below)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Double Portrait with Hat
c. 1936-37
Gelatin silver print, montage with handwork on negative
Image: 29.8 x 23.8cm (11 3/4 x 9 3/8 in.)
Gift of David Raymond
The Cleveland Museum of Art
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

To produce this complex image, Maar sandwiched together two negatives of the same model, one frontal and one profile, scavenged from a magazine assignment on springtime hats, and painted the background and hat (or decomposing halo?) onto the negative. Softening the emulsion, she scraped and lifted it off, techniques that involve destruction and suggest disintegration. The face evokes Picasso’s depictions of female faces, especially his 1938 paintings of weeping women for which Maar was the model. Although the divided face is not Maar’s, it is tempting to interpret it as a reflection of her emotional state at the time, torn between her career and independence and Picasso’s demands and potent personality. frontal and one profile, scavenged from a magazine assignment on springtime hats, and painted the background and hat (or decomposing halo?) onto the negative. Softening the emulsion, she scraped and lifted it off, techniques that involve destruction and suggest disintegration. The face evokes Picasso’s depictions of female faces, especially his 1938 paintings of weeping women for which Maar was the model. Although the divided face is not Maar’s, it is tempting to interpret it as a reflection of her emotional state at the time, torn between her career and independence and Picasso’s demands and potent personality.

Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Profile portrait with glasses and hat
1930-1935
Gelatin silver print
© Dora Maar Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Man looking inside a sidewalk inspection door, London
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, New York
Courtesy art2art Circulating Exhibitions
© Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019, All Rights Reserved

Maar became involved with the surrealists from 1933 and was one of the few artists – and even fewer women – to be included in the surrealists’ exhibitions. She became close to the group because of their shared left-wing politics at a time of social and civil unrest in France.

Maar’s photography and photomontages explore surrealist themes such as eroticism, sleep, the unconscious and the relationship between art and reality. Cropped frames, dramatic angles, unexpected juxtapositions and extreme close-ups are used to create surreal images. Contrasting with the idea of a photograph as a factual record, Maar’s scenes disorientate the viewer and create new worlds altogether.

Anonymous text from “Seven Things to Know: Dora Maar,” on the Tate website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing Maar’s photographs Portrait of Nusch Éluard (1935, left) and Les années vous guettent (The Years are Waiting for You) (1932, right)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Portrait of Nusch Éluard
1935
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Les années vous guettent (The Years are Waiting for You)
1932
Gelatin silver print
© Dora Maar Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print

Eileen Agar (British-Argentinian, 1899-1991)
Photograph of Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso on the beach
September 1937
Gelatin silver print
68 x 60 mm
Taken in Juan-les-pins, France
Tate Archive
Presented to Tate Archive by Eileen Agar in 1989 and transferred from the photograph collection in 2012

Eileen Agar (British-Argentinian, 1899-1991)
Photograph of Dora Maar, Nusch Éluard, Pablo Picasso and Paul Éluard on the beach
September 1937
Gelatin silver print
66 x 66 mm
Taken in Juan-les-pins, France
Tate Archive
Presented to Tate Archive by Eileen Agar in 1989 and transferred from the photograph collection in 2012

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Portrait of Picasso, Paris, studio 29, rue d’Astorg
Winter, 1935
Silver gelatin negative on flexible support in cellulose nitrate
12 x 9cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Dist. RMN-GP

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Portrait of Pablo Picasso
1936
Pastel on paper
57.5 x 45cm
Private collection, Yann Panier
Courtesy Galerie Brame and Lorenceau
© Adagp, Paris 2019
© The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Portrait of Dora Maar
1937
Musée National Picasso-Paris
Copyright RMN-Grand Palais, Mathieu Rabeau and Succession Picasso, 2018

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Guernica
May-June, 1937
Gelatin silver print
Musée National Picasso-Paris
Copyright RMN-Grand Palais, Mathieu Rabeau and Succession Picasso, 2018

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Picasso working on “Guernica”
1937
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy VEGAP / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing Maar’s painting The Conversation 1937
Photo: Tate (Andrew Dunkley)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
The Conversation
1937
Oil on canvas
162 x 130cm
Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Madrid
© FABA © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Photo: Marc Domage

“I must dwell apart in the desert,” the artist and surrealist photographer Dora Maar once said. “I want to create an aura of mystery about my work. People must long to see it.

“I’m still too famous as Picasso’s mistress to be accepted as a painter.”

These words form part of a conversation recorded by Maar’s friend, the art writer James Lord, in his memoir “Picasso and Dora.” During the exchange, the French artist also explains how she rationalised the work of her later years, given that she rarely exhibited and was not in demand. …

With its deliberate focus on their art, the exhibition doesn’t address certain troubling questions about the pair’s unequal personal relationship. In her memoirs, Picasso’s later lover, Françoise Gilot, recounted the brutal bullying to which the artist subjected Maar. Picasso once described the time that Maar and a previous lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, came to blows in his studio as one of his “choicest memories.”

It’s a subject Maar didn’t shy away from in her art, painting herself alongside Walter in “The Conversation,” one of the works on show at the Tate Modern. Maar is depicted facing away while Walter looks directly at the viewer.

During the aforementioned exchange with James Lord, Maar told the writer that Picasso’s portraits of her were “lies.” But the struggle for recognition she went on to describe is more insightful – that she had to survive in the “desert” to be celebrated on her own terms.

Max Ramsay. “Dora Maar is no longer Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’,” on the CNN website 20th November 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Dora Maar seated
1938
Ink, gouache and oil paint on paper on canvas
Support: 689 x 625 mm
Frame: 925 x 685 x 120 mm
Tate
Purchased 1960

In late 1935 or early 1936, Maar met Pablo Picasso. They became lovers soon afterwards. She was at the height of her career, while he was emerging from what he described as ‘the worst time of my life’. He had not sculpted or painted for months.

Their relationship had a huge affect on both their careers. Maar documented the creation of Picasso’s most political work, Guernica 1937, encouraged his political awareness and educated him in photography. Specifically, Maar taught Picasso the cliché verre technique – a complex method combining photography and printmaking.

Picasso painted Maar in numerous portraits, including Weeping Woman 1937. However, Maar explained that she felt this wasn’t a portrait of her. Instead it was a metaphor for the tragedy of the Spanish people. Picasso also encouraged Maar to return to painting. The flattened features and bold outlines of the cubist-style portraits Maar made at this time suggest Picasso’s influence. By 1940 her passport listed her profession as ‘photographer-painter’.

Anonymous text from “Seven Things to Know: Dora Maar,” on the Tate website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing portraits of the artist by numerous artists, some of which you can see below

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Self-portrait with Fan
1930
Gelatin silver print

Emmanuel Sougez (French, 1889-1972)
Dora Maar
Paris, 1934
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar considered the French commercial photographer Emmanuel Sougez (1889-1972) her mentor. Her first commission was a book on Mont-Saint-Michel written by art critic Germain Bazin. She collaborated with the stage-set designer Pierre Kéfer in 1931. From that experience they formed a business partnership, set up at first in his parents’ garden in Neuilly and then moving to their own studio at 9 rue Campagne-Première, lent by the Polish photographer Harry Ossip Meerson (1910-1991), younger brother of the cinema art director Lazare Meerson (1900-1938), who had worked with Kéber at Film Albatros studio in the mid-1920s. Harry Meerson also lent out his darkroom to the Hungarian photographer Brassai (Gyula Halász, 1899-1984), who became Dora Maar’s close friend. Her contact with Brassai brought her into the Surrealist circle.

The Kéfer-Dora Maar studio produced glamorous, innovative images for advertising and portraits, becoming part of the booming industry of commercial photography in glossy magazines. It was a fertile context for Dora Maar’s imagination. Her perspective on the modern women of the 1930s produced models oozing with elegant sensuality. Cool, natural, sometimes athletic, sometimes aristocratic, the Kéfer-Dora Maar female gave off a whiff of eroticise insouciance that emanated from Dora’s own disposition. This conceptualisation of contemporary beauty fed the appetite for luxury and leisure time activities, despite the Great Depression. It was a fantasy for some, a reality for others. During this period of working intensely with Pierre Kéfer, Dora had affairs with the filmmaker Louis Chavance (c. 1932-1933) and the erotically transgressive writer Georges Bataille (late 1933-1934). The Kéfer-Dora Maar studio closed in 1934.

Beth Gersh-Nesic. “Picasso’s Weeping Woman as Artist Instead of Muse: Dora Maar’s Retrospective at Centre Pompidou,” on the Bonjour Paris website July 24, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Portrait of Dora Maar
1936
Gelatin silver print

Rogi André (née Rosa Klein) (French born Hungary, 1900-1970)
Dora Maar, Paris
1941
Gelatin silver print
6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (16.5 x 11.4cm)

Brassaï (French-Hungarian, 1899-1984)
Dora Maar dans son atelier rue de Savoie (Dora Maar in her workshop rue de Savoie)
1943
Gelatin silver print
© Adagp, Paris 2019 / Estate Brassaï – RMN-Grand Palais

Izis (Israel Bidermanas) (Lithuanian-Jewish, 1911-1980)
Dora Maar
1946
Gelatin silver print

Izis (Israel Bidermanas) (Lithuanian-Jewish, 1911-1980)

Israëlis Bidermanas (17 January 1911 in Marijampolė – 16 May 1980 in Paris), who worked under the name of Izis, was a Lithuanian-Jewish photographer who worked in France and is best known for his photographs of French circuses and of Paris.

Upon the liberation of France at the end of World War II, Izis had a series of portraits of maquisards (rural resistance fighters who operated mainly in southern France) published to considerable acclaim. He returned to Paris where he became friends with French poet Jacques Prévert and other artists. Izis became a major figure in the mid-century French movement of humanist photography – also exemplified by Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Sabine Weiss and Ronis – with “work that often displayed a wistfully poetic image of the city and its people.”

For his first book, Paris des rêves (Paris of Dreams), Izis asked writers and poets to contribute short texts to accompany his photographs, many of which showed Parisians and others apparently asleep or daydreaming. The book, which Izis designed, was a success. Izis joined Paris Match in 1950 and remained with it for twenty years, during which time he could choose his assignments.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009)
Dora Maar
France 1948
Gelatin silver print

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Still life
1941
Oil on canvas
© Adagp, Paris, 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Still Life with Jar and Cup
1945
Oil on canvas
45.5 x 50cm
Private Collection
© Adagp, Paris, 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Landscape in Lubéron
1950’s
Private collection of Nancy B. Negley
© Adagp © Brice Toul

Although the late works are not as significant contributions to the history of art as her Surrealist photomontages, they inform our knowledge of this Parisian artist’s accomplishments in general and beg the question: Was Dora Maar’s brilliant career cut short by the typical conflicts facing professional women in the 1930s, and even today? Or was she a victim of Picasso’s psychological abuse, which chipped away at her original confidence? Was she compromised to the point that she only wanted to please the man she loved? According to art historian John Richardson, Dora Maar sacrificed her gifts on the altar of her art god, her idol, Picasso. Based on the early Surrealist photographs we see in her retrospective, one can only wish she hadn’t taken up with Picasso, for it seems she might have achieved far more in her lifetime without him.

Beth Gersh-Nesic. “Picasso’s Weeping Woman as Artist Instead of Muse: Dora Maar’s Retrospective at Centre Pompidou,” on the Bonjour Paris website July 24, 2019 [Online] Cited 23/11/2019

Installation view of the exhibition Dora Maar at Tate Modern, 2019 showing Maar’s paintings and photograms from the 1950s-1980s (see below)

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
c. 1957
Watercolour
© Adagp, Paris 2019
Photo: © Centre Pompidou

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
1980s
Gelatin silver print
23.5 × 17.4cm (9 1/4 × 6 7/8 in.)
© Dora Maar Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Abstract photogram

The 1940s brought a series of traumas. Maar’s father left Paris for Argentina, her mother and best friend Nusch Eluard both died suddenly, her relationship with Picasso ended, and friends went into exile. The difficulty of this time is reflected in some of her work from this period.

Maar was included in many group and solo exhibitions in the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid-1940s she began to spend more time in rural surroundings of Ménerbes in the south of France. Here she regained her confidence as a painter and developed her own style of abstract landscapes. Exhibited across Europe, this work received very positive reviews.

In the 1980s, Maar returned to photography. However, she was no longer interested in photographing life on the street. Instead, Maar was interested in what she could create in the darkroom and experimented with hundreds of photograms (camera-less photographs).

Dora Maar died on July 16, 1997, at 89 years old. Throughout her life she created a vast and varied range of work, much of which was only discovered after her death.

Anonymous text from “Seven Things to Know: Dora Maar,” on the Tate website [Online] Cited 16/11/2019

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
c. 1980
Gelatin silver print
23.5 × 30cm (9 1/4 × 11 13/16 in.)
© Dora Maar Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
1980s
Silver gelatin print
9 x 6cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Untitled
c. 1980
Silver gelatin print
9 x 6cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne Centre de création industrielle
© Adagp, Paris
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / P. Migeat / Dist. RMN-GP

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
United Kingdom

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00 – 18.00

Tate Modern website

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Exhibition: ‘Aenne Biermann. Intimacy with Things’ at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Exhibition dates: 12th July, 2019 – 13th October, 2019

Exhibition curators: Dr Simone Förster together with Anna Volz

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933) 'Self-Portrait with Silver Ball' 1931 from the exhibition 'Aenne Biermann. Intimacy with Things' at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, July 2019 - October 2019

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Self-Portrait with Silver Ball
1931
Gelatin silver print
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg

Another strong woman, another inspirational female avant-garde 1930s photographer. Just look at the darkness of the pear in her photograph Fruit Basket (1931, below). The photographer proclaims the beauty and decay of nature. Magnificent.

Marcus

Many thankx to the Pinakothek der Moderne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on thep hotographs for a larger version of the image.

For the autodidact Aenne Biermann (1898-1933) the camera was a means of closing in on things and situations in her immediate environment. From the mid 1920s onwards she found great pleasure in capturing unfamiliar and unexpected views of everyday experiences and events in her photographs. Although Aenne Biermann worked in relative isolation with regard to the avant-garde developments in larger cities, comprehensive displays of her work were shown at all major modern photographic exhibitions from 1929 onwards. Her oeuvre, created within just a few years – Aenne Biermann died in 1933 following an illness – is now regarded as one of the most important within the Neues Sehen (New Vision) movement in photography and New Objectivity.

The exhibition comprises some 100 original photographs from the holdings of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation that boasts one of the most extensive collections of Aenne Biermann’s work. Selected works from public and private collections, together with records and archival documents, illuminate the artist’s work and career.

#PinaBiermann

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933) 'Gartenkugeln' Nd from the exhibition 'Aenne Biermann. Intimacy with Things' at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, July 2019 - October 2019

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Gartenkugeln [Garden Balls]
Nd
Silver gelatine print

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Ficus elastica
1926-1928
Silver gelatine print
46.7 x 35cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

An avid amateur mineralogist, it was through her collection of rocks that in 1926 she met the geologist Rudolf Hundt, who commissioned her to photograph his specimens the following year for his scientific work. Her photographs of minerals transformed her practice from the early personal views of her children to the close-up, direct studies of form that would define her photographs of plants and people that followed and make her a central figure in New Objectivity photography. Thus 1926 began a period of intense productivity for Biermann that lasted until her untimely death, from liver disease, at the age of thirty-five, in 1933.

Mitra Abbaspour on the Museum of Modern Art website Nd [Online] Cited 03/08/2019

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Finale
before October 1928
Silver gelatine print
47.4 x 34.8cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
A Child’s Hands
1928
Silver gelatine print
12.3 x 16.6cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933) 'Lady with Monocle' 1928/29

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Lady with Monocle
1928/1929
Silver gelatine print
17 x 12.6 cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
View from my Studio Window
1929
Silver gelatine print
23.6 x 17.3cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Today, Aenne Biermann (1898-1933) is considered one of the major proponents of ‘New Photography’. Although she was only active as a photographer for a few years and, unlike her female colleagues Florence Henri, Germaine Krull and Lucia Moholy, for example, had neither an artistic training nor moved within the avant-garde circles of major urban centres, Aenne Biermann developed her own markedly modern pictorial style that established her position as a representative of contemporary avant-garde photography within a very short time. Clear structures, precise compositions with light and shadow, as well as cropped images focussing on specific details are characteristic of Aenne Biermann’s photography. They elicit a unique poetry from the people and objects in her everyday surroundings and establish an ‘intimacy with things’, as Aenne Biermann wrote in 1930.

Growing up in a Jewish factory owner’s family on the Lower Rhine, Aenne Biermann did not move on to higher education; instead, her musical skills were furthered and she was given piano lessons. Following her marriage to the merchant Herbert Biermann in 1920, she moved to Gera / Thuringia and became part of an upper-middle class, intellectual society that was extremely open to modern movements in art and culture and cultivated these within its own local radius. For Aenne Biermann, the starting point for her close involvement with photography was the birth of her children Helga (1920) and Gerd (1923). Initially used merely as a medium to document her children’s progress, from the mid 1920s Aenne Biermann developed her own, creative sphere in her photographic work. She focussed her camera on plants, objects, people and everyday situations and used the medium as an artistic means to access her own personal surroundings.

In 1928 the art critic Franz Roh arranged for the photographer’s first solo exhibition to be held at the Graphisches Kabinett Günther Franke in Munich and presented her work in Das Kunstblatt, a trend-setting monthly magazine for contemporary art in Germany. This led to her participation in numerous major exhibitions of modern photography, such as Film und Foto (1929), and solo exhibitions in Oldenburg, Jena and Gera. Aenne Biermann’s pictures received awards in photographic competitions and were published in books, art magazines and illustrated journals. In 1930 her photographs appeared in Franz Roh’s Fototek series of books: Aenne Biermann. 60 Fotos is one of the rare monographs of a photographer’s work of the time.

As a result of the artist’s early death and the family’s forced emigration in the 1930s, a large part of the photographer’s archive was lost. Its whereabouts remains unknown to this day. In more than forty years of extensive and intense research Ann and Jürgen succeeded in assembling a large number of images that give a representative picture of Aenne Biermann’s œuvre and now form one of the largest collections of the photographer’s work.

The presentation comprises more than 100 original photographs, 73 of which are, in part, large-format exhibition prints from the holdings of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation. Loans from the Museum Folkwang, Essen, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Gera, the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Kunstbibliothek, the Münchner Stadtmuseum, the Galerie Berinson, Berlin, the Franz Roh Estate and the Dietmar Siegert Collection, Munich, as well as the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Archive, Zülpich, complement the exhibition.

Press release from the Pinakothek der Moderne [Online] Cited 28/07/2019

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Contemplation
1930
Silver gelatine print
58 × 42cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Repair
1930/31
Silver gelatine print
24.8 x 18cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Rail Tracks
1932
Silver gelatine print
24.1 x 17.5cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Fruit Basket
1931
Silver gelatin print
16.6 x 23.6 cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Aenne Biermann (German, 1898-1933)
Eggs
1931
Silver gelatin print
17 x 23.9cm
Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Photo: Sibylle Forster

Pinakothek der Moderne
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Thursday 10am – 8pm

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Exhibitions: ‘The Rebellious Image: Kreuzberg’s “Werkstatt für Photographie” and the Young Folkwang Scene in the 1980s’ at Museum Folkwang Essen / ‘Kreuzberg – Amerika: Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86’ at C/O Berlin, Germany

Museum Folkwang Essen exhibition dates: 9th December, 2016 – 19th February, 2017
C/O Berlin exhibition dates: 10th December, 2016 – 12th February, 2017

Uschi Blume
From the series Worauf wartest Du? (What are you waiting for?)
1980
Silver gelatine print
27.3 x 40.3cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen
© Uschi Blume

It’s so good to see these essential, vital, rebellious images from Germany as a counterpoint and “additional chapter to the history of West German photography of the time beyond that of the Düsseldorf School,” ie. the New Objectivity of Bernd and Hilla Becher with their austere “images of the water towers, oil refineries and silos of the fast-disappearing industrial landscape of the Ruhr valley.”

“A special artistic approach emerged from a dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between conceptual approaches and documentary narrations, between technical mediation and substantive critique and altered the styles of many photographers over time thanks to its direct access to their reality.”

I love the rawness and directness of these images. They speak to me through their colour, high contrast, frontality and narrative. A conversation in art and life from people around the world.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Museum Folkwang Essen and C/O Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs from The Rebellious Image exhibition unless it states differently underneath the photograph.

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014) 'Untitled', from 'Portrait' 1983

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Untitled, from the series Portrait
1983
© Stiftung für Fotografie und Medienkunst, Archiv Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Menschenbilder Ausschnite
1983/97
© Stiftung für Fotografie und Medienkunst, Archiv Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
Peter Beard and friends
1976
From the series Black Tie
Gelatin silver print
35.8 x 36.4cm
© Larry Fink

Ursula Kelm (German, b. 1942)
Self portrait 4
1983
© Ursula Kelm

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Wolfgang Eilmes (German, b. 1955)
From the series Kreuzberg
1979
© Wolfgang Eilmes

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Wilmar Koenig (German, b. 1952)
Untitled, from the series Portraits, 1981-1983
© Wilmar Koenig

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Müller-/Ecke Seestraße
1976-1978
from the series Berlin-Wedding
1979
© Foundation for Photography and Media Art with Archive Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Petra Wittmar (German, b. 1955) From the series 'Medebach' 1979-1983

Petra Wittmar (German, b. 1955)
From the series Medebach
1979-83
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the artist
© Petra Wittmar

Wendelin Bottländer
Untitled
1980
From the series Stadtlandschaften (City landscapes)
C-Print
24 x 30.2cm
Courtesy of the artist
© Wendelin Bottländer

Andreas Horlitz (German, 1955-2016)
Essen Frühling (Essen Spring)
1981
© Andreas Horlitz

The exhibition The Rebellious Image (December 9, 2016 – February 19, 2017) – part of the three-part collaborative project Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986 , held in association with C/O Berlin and Sprengel Museum Hannover – sheds light on this period of upheaval and generational change within German photography, focusing on the photography scene in Essen.

Towards the end of the 1970s, two developments took place in Essen: the first was a revolt, a search for a new path, for a ‘free’ form of artistic photography beyond the confines of photojournalism and commercial photography; the second was the institutionalisation of photography which occurred with the foundation of the Museum Folkwang’s Photographic Collection. Some 300 photographs and a range of filmic statements and documentary material help to bring this era of change and flux in the medium of photography back to life: showing the evolution of new visual languages which – in contrast to the Düsseldorf School’s aesthetics of distance ‘ placed an emphasis on colour, soft-focus blurring and fragmentation.

The show sets out from the climate of uncertainty that developed in the wake of the death of Otto Steinert in 1978, who, as a photographer, teacher and curator, had been particularly influential in Essen in the field of photojournalism. In the area of teaching, photographic design began to come to the fore, while with the founding of the Photographic Collection at Museum Folkwang under Ute Eskildsen, the institutionalisation of artistic photography began. Young students – among them, Gosbert Adler, Joachim Brohm, Uschi Blume, Andreas Horlitz and Petra Wittmar – developed a form of photography that was divorced from typical clichés and commercial utility. The impulse behind this development was provided by the Berlin-based photographer Michael Schmidt. In 1979 and 1980, he taught in Essen and fostered a close dialogue with the Berlin and American scenes.

Over seven chapters, The Rebellious Image traces the development of photography in the 1980s in Germany: the show presents the early alternative exhibitions of these young photographers and provides an insight into the formative projects of the first recipients of the Stipendium Für Zeitgenössische Deutsche Fotografie (German Contemporary Photography Award) awarded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung. It shows how these young photographic artists refined topographic and documentary photography through their work with colour and their deliberate adoption of the anti-aesthetics of amateur photography. The Rebellious Image reflects on the debates and themes of the exhibition Reste Des Authentischen: Deutsche Fotobilder der 80er Jahre (The Remains of Authenticity: German Photography in the 80s). The largest and most ambitious photographic exhibition of this era, it took place in 1986 at the Museum Folkwang. This exhibition brought together representatives of the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie, graduates of the Essen School and artists from the Rhineland who were united by their postmodern conception of reality. As such, The Rebellious Image presents a different, subjective perspective, which developed parallel to the objectivising style of the Düsseldorf School and their aesthetic of the large-format images.

The exhibition brings together important and rarely exhibited groups of works by former students in Essen such as Gosbert Adler, Volker Heinze, Joachim Brohm, Uschi Blume, Andreas Horlitz and Petra Wittmar. References to the American photography of the time – such as Stephen Shore, Larry Fink, Diane Arbus, Larry Clark or William Eggleston – make the preoccupations of this young scene apparent. In addition, with works by Michael Schmidt, Christa Mayer and Wilmar Koenig, members of the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie are also represented.”

Press release from Museum Folkwang Essen

C/O Berlin is presenting the exhibition Kreuzberg – Amerika from December 10th, 2016 to February 12th, 2017. The exhibition is part of the project about the Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986, in which C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang Essen and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting the history, influences and effects of the legendary Berlin-based photographic institute and its key players in an intercity cooperation.

“We try to help students to recognise or even find their personality, where photography becomes irrelevant with regard to its commercial applicability.” ~ Michael Schmidt, 1979

Starting in the 1970s, a unique departure in photography took place in Germany. A younger generation in various initiatives quickly established a new infrastructure for a different perspective on photography and consciously defined the medium as an independent art form – to this very day. The Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography), founded in Berlin by Michael Schmidt in 1976, is one of these innovative models and as an institution was completely unique. That’s because it offered an openly accessible cultural production and intensified adult education beyond academic hurdles and without access limitations. A special artistic approach emerged from the unconventional dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between technical mediation and substantive critique as well as on the basis of documentary approaches. Its special access to reality defined styles for a long time. The Werkstatt für Photographie reached the international level through exhibitions, workshops and courses and established itself as an important location for the transatlantic photographic dialog between Kreuzberg, Germany and America. A unique and pioneering achievement!

In the beginning of the Werkstatt für Photographie, a strict documentary perspective prevailed that was based on the neutral aesthetic of the work of Michael Schmidt and concentrated on the blunt representation of everyday life and reality in a radical denial of common photographic norms. He and the young photographer scene later experimented with new forms of documentary that emphasised the subjective view of the author. They discovered colour as an artistic form of expression and developed an independent, artistic authorship with largely unconventional perspectives.

The Werkstatt für Photographie offered anyone who was interested a free space to develop their artistic talents. In addition to its open, international and communicative character, it was also a successful model for self-empowerment that at the same time was characterised by paradoxes. That’s because the vocational school set in the local community developed into a lively international network of contemporary photographers. The students were not trained photographers but rather self-taught artists and as such had a freer understanding of the medium than their professional counterparts. Moreover, the majority of teachers had no educational training but were all active in the context of adult education. At that time, there were also no curators for photography in Germany but the Werkstatt für Photographie were already independently hosting exhibitions alternating between unknown and renowned photographers…

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Werkstatt für Photographie, C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang Essen and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting a joint exhibition project, which for the first time portrays the history, influences and effects of this institution and its key players divided between three stages. Furthermore, the three stages outline the situation of a changing medium, which focuses on independent, artistic authorship encouraged by consciousness of American photography. As such, they’re designing a lively and multi-perspective presentation of photography in the 1970s and 1980s that adds an additional chapter to the history of West German photography of the time beyond that of the Düsseldorf School.

Text from the C/O Berlin website

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The beginnings / How it began. Part 1

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the workshop for photography, C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting a joint exhibition project that describes the career of this institution and its actors for the first time. In addition, the three stations outline the situation of a medium on the move that – encouraged by the self-confidence of American photography – relies on independent, artistic authorship. The exhibitions create a lively, multi-perspective image of photography from the 1970s and 1980s, which adds another chapter to the history of West German photography at the time, in addition to the Düsseldorf School.

Andreas Langfeld studied photography at the Folkwang University in Essen. He is a freelance photographer and filmmaker. Svenja Paulsen is a scholarship holder in the Museum Curators for Photography program of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. Between February and October 2016, on the occasion of the exhibition cooperation between C/O Berlin, Museum Folkwang and Sprengel Museum at the workshop for photography, they conducted interviews with the photographers involved.

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The Americans. Part 2

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Essen. Part 3

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Michael Schmidt. Part 4

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Hanover. Part 5

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Düsseldorf, Terrace
1980
C-Print
43.2 x 49.4cm
© Andreas Gursky, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
Courtesy of the artist + Sprüth Magers

Joachim Brohm (German, b. 1955)
Revierpark Nienhausen, Gelsenkirchen
Parking area Nienhausen, Gelsenkirchen
1982
From the series Ruhr, 1980-1983
C-Print
22.2 x 27.2 cm
© Joachim Brohm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Reining in the picture
Joachim Brohm

Born in Dülken, Brohm studied at the Gesamthochschule, Essen and was one of the few photographers who used colour photography in the late 1970s. In his series Ruhr he tries to create a new view of the Ruhr area through the occasional recording of urban space. Brohm’s approach coincides with the claim of the then current “New Topographics” to capture the social reality in the direct environment in a documentary style. In the German-speaking photo landscape here he took a leading role.

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
New York Magazine Party, New York City, October 1977
1977
From the series Social Graces
1984 © Larry Fink

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Whitehaven, Mississippi
1972
© William Eggleston, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Gosbert Adler (German, b. 1956) From the series 'Ohne Titel' 1982-1983

Gosbert Adler (German, b. 1956)
from the series Ohne Titel
1982-83
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Memphis
1970
Dye-Transfer
33.5 x 51.5cm
© Eggleston Artistic Trust, Memphis

Wilmar Koenig (German, b. 1952)
Floating Chair
1984
From the series Die Wege (The Ways)
C-Print
162 x 126.8cm
Courtesy Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
© Wilmar Koenig

The working-class district of Kreuzberg at the end of the 1970s on the outer edge of West Berlin – and yet the lively centre of a unique transatlantic cultural exchange. In the midst of the Cold War, the newly founded Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) located near Checkpoint Charlie started an artistic “air lift” in the direction of the USA, a democratic field of experimentation beyond traditional education and political and institutional standards. A special artistic approach emerged from a dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between conceptual approaches and documentary narrations, between technical mediation and substantive critique and altered the styles of many photographers over time thanks to its direct access to their reality. The Werkstatt für Photographie reached the highest international standing with its intensive mediation work through exhibitions, workshops, lectures, image reviews, discussions and specialised courses.

In 1976, the Berlin-based photographer Michael Schmidt founded the Werkstatt für Photographie at the adult education centre in Kreuzberg. Its course orientation with a focus on a substantive examination of contemporary photography was unique and quickly lead to a profound understanding of the medium as an independent art form. When the institution was closed in 1986, it fell into obscurity.

C/O Berlin is addressing the history of the Werkstatt für Photographie in its contribution entitled Kreuzberg – Amerika (December 10, 2016 – February 12, 2017). Within the context of adult education, a unique forum for contemporary photography emerged. A special focus is placed on the exhibitions of the American photographers that were often presented in the workshop for the first time and had an enormous effect on the development of artistic photography in Germany. The exhibition combines the works of faculty, students and guests into a transatlantic dialogue.

The Museum Folkwang in Essen is exploring the reflection of the general change of those years in its own Folkwang history with its work entitled The Rebellious Image (December 9, 2016 – February 19, 2017). After the death of the influential photography teacher Otto Steinerts in 1978, a completely open and productive situation of uncertainty reigned. Essen became more and more of a bridgehead for the exchange with Berlin and a point of crystallisation for early contemporary photography in the Federal Republic. Along with Michael Schmidt, who made provocative points during his time as a lecturer at the GHS Essen, Ute Eskildsen counted among the key players at Museum Folkwang as a curator. Early photography based in Essen addressed urbanity and youth culture, discovered colour as a mode of artistic expression, asked questions following new documentarian approaches, authentic images and attitudes and contrasted the objective distance of the Düsseldorf School with a research-based and subjective view.

The Sprengel Museum Hannover complements both exhibitions with a perspective in which the focus rests on publications, institutions and exhibitions that encouraged the transatlantic exchange starting in the mid 1960s. Using outstanding examples And Suddenly this Expanse (December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017) tells of the development of the infrastructure that laid the foundation for and accompanied the context of the documentarian approach. The photo magazine Camera also takes on an equally central role as the founding of the first German photo galleries such as Galerie Wilde in Cologne, Lichttropfen in Aachen, Galerie Nagel in Berlin and the Spectrum Photogalerie initiative in Hanover. The documenta 6 from 1977 and the photo magazines that emerged in the 1970s, particularly Camera Austria, have separate chapters devoted to them.

Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986
A cooperation between C/O Berlin, Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Sprengel Museum Hannover

Sprengel Museum Hannover
And Suddenly this Expanse
December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017
www.sprengel-museum.de

C/O Berlin
Kreuzberg – Amerika
Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
December 10, 2016 – February 12, 2017
www.co-berlin.org

Text from the Museum Folkwang Essen website

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
Untitled
1971
From the series Tulsa
Silver gelatin print
© Larry Clark, Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th Dezember 2016 – 12th February 2017

Camera Nr. 8, August 1970
1970
C. J. Bucher Verlag Luzern, Schweiz,
Title: John Gossage, Kodak TRI-X
Sprengel Museum Hannover

From the exhibition at Sprengel Museum Hannover And Suddenly this Expanse
December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017

Gosbert Adler (German, b. 1956)
Untitled
1982
C-Print
38.4 x 29cm
© Gosbert Adler
© VG-Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Volker Heinze (German, b. 1962)
Bill Eggleston
1985
C-Print
85 x 62cm
© Volker Heinze

Christa Mayer (German, b. 1945)
Untitled
1983
From the series Abwesende, Porträts aus einer psychatrischen Langzeitstation (Absentees, Portraits from a long term psychiatric ward)
Gelatin silver print
28.3 x 28.1cm
© Christa Mayer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th Dezember 2016 – 12th February 2017

Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen

Opening hours:
Tue, Wed 10am – 6pm
Thur, Fri 10am – 8pm
Sat, Sun 10am – 6pm
Mon closed

Museum Folkwang website

C/O Berlin
Hardenbergstraße 22-24, 10623 Berlin

Opening hours:
Daily 11am – 8pm

C/O Berlin website

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Exhibition: ‘Kati Horna’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

Exhibition dates: 3rd June – 21st September, 2014

Curators: Ángeles Alonso Espinosa, anthropologist and curator at the Museo Amparo in Mexico, and José Antonio Rodríguez, historian of the image and freelance curator

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000) 'Untitled' Paris, 1939 from the exhibition 'Kati Horna' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, June- September, 2014

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled
Paris, 1939
From theMuñecas del miedo series [Dolls of Fear],
Gelatin silver print
15.3 x 22.8cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

I really love the work of artists such as Kati Horna and Florence Henri “with the production of collages and photomontages inspired by the avant-garde movements of the 1930s (the Bauhaus, Surrealism, German Neue Sachlichkeit, Russian Constructivism).”

Horna’s photographs have more of a political edge than that of Florence Henri, with her unique photographic reportage of the Spanish Civil War between 1937-39 and her Hitler series both having a strong social critique. Here is another politically aware artist who stood up for the cause, who recorded the “everyday life for the civilian population through a vision that was in empathy with the environment and the people.” Again, here is another who was lucky to survive the maelstrom of the Second World War, who would have certainly ended up dead if she and her Andalusian artist husband José Horna had not fled Paris in 1939 for their adopted country Mexico.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS I spent hours cleaning up the press images, there were in a really poor state, but the work was so worthwhile… they really sing now!

Many thankx to the Jeu de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

This summer, the Jeu de Paume, which is celebrating 10 years devoted to the image, will be inviting the public to discover Kati Horna (1912-2000), an avant-garde, humanist photographer, who was born in Hungary and exiled in Mexico, where she documented the local art scene.

Robert Capa (Hungarian-American, 1913-1954) (attributed to) 'Kati Horna in the Studio of József Pécsi' Budapest, 1933 from the exhibition 'Kati Horna' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, June- September, 2014

Robert Capa (Hungarian-American, 1913-1954) (attributed to)
Kati Horna in the Studio of József Pécsi
Budapest, 1933
Gelatin silver print
10.5 x 7.5cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

In collaboration with the Museo Amparo in Puebla (Mexico), the Jeu de Paume is presenting the first retrospective of the work of photographer Kati Horna (Szilasbalhási, Hungary, 1912-Mexico, 2000), showing more than six decades of work in Hungary, France, Spain and Mexico. Kati Horna, a photographer whose adopted homeland was Mexico, was one of a generation of Hungarian photographers (including André Kertész, Robert Capa, Eva Besnyö, László Moholy-Nagy, Nicolás Muller, Brassaï, Rogi André, Ergy Landau and Martin Munkácsi) forced to flee their country due to the conflicts and social upheaval of the 1930s.

Cosmopolitan and avant-garde, Kati Horna was known above all for her images of the Spanish Civil War, produced at the request of the Spanish Republican government between 1937 and 1939. Her work is characterised by both its adherence to the principles of Surrealist photography and her very personal approach to photographic reportage.

This major retrospective helps to bring international recognition to this versatile, socially committed, humanist photographer, highlighting her unusual artistic creativity and her contribution to photojournalism. It offers a comprehensive overview of the work of this artist, who started out as a photographer in Hungary at the age of 21, in the context of the European avant-garde movements of the 1930s: Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus school, Surrealism and German Neue Sachlichkeit. Her vast output, produced both in Europe and Mexico, her adopted country, is reflected in a selection of over 150 works – most of them vintage prints, the vast majority of them unpublished or little known.

In Mexico, Kati Horna formed a new family with the émigré artists Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, Emerico ‘Chiki’ Weisz, Edward James and, later on, Leonora Carrington. In parallel with her reportages, she took different series of photographs of visual stories, extraordinary creations featuring masks and dolls, motifs that began to appear in her work in the 1930s.

Kati Horna also became the great portraitist of the Mexican literary and artistic avant-garde; her visionary photographs captured the leading artists in Mexico during the 1960s, such as Alfonso Reyes, Germán Cueto, Remedios Varo, Pedro Friedeberg, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mathias Goeritz and Leonora Carrington.

The exhibition is divided into five periods: her beginnings in Budapest, Berlin and Paris between 1933 and 1937; Spain and the Civil War from 1937 to 1939; Paris again in 1939; then Mexico. The exhibition also presents a number of documents, in particular the periodicals that she contributed to during her travels between Hungary, France, Spain and Mexico. The works come from the Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna, the Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica de España, Salamanca, the Museo Amparo, Puebla, as well as private collections.

Press release from the Jeu de Paume website

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Invierno en el patio [Winter in the Courtyard]
Paris, 1939
Gelatin silver print
18.8 x 18.3cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Beginnings: Budapest, Berlin And Paris

Afterwards I returned to Paris, and do you know why I didn’t die of hunger in Paris? Before I left, everyone mocked me, “there’s the photographer”, I was the photographer of eggs. I had this idea of being the first one to do things, not with figurines, but little stories with eggs, and it was that wonderful draughtsman who subsequently committed suicide who did the faces for me… The first was the romantic story of a carrot and a potato. The carrot declared its love to the potato. He always did the faces and I staged the scenes. I took the photos with my big camera with 4 x 5 negatives.

Kati Horna

Born in Hungary to a family of bankers of Jewish origin during a period of political and social instability, Kati Horna would always be deeply marked by the violence, injustice and danger around her. This situation helped to forge her ideological commitment, her perpetual search for freedom, her particular way of denouncing injustice, as well as her compassionate and human vision, like that of Lee Miller and her pictures of the Second World War. As was the case for her great childhood friend Robert Capa, to whom she would remain close throughout her life, photography became a fundamental means of expression.

At the age of 19 she left Budapest to live in Germany for a year, where she joined the Bertolt Brecht collective. She frequented photographer friends and compatriots Robert Capa and ‘Chiki’ Weisz, as well as other major figures in Hungarian photography, such as László Moholy-Nagy – who at the time was a teacher at the Bauhaus school – and Simon Guttman, founder of the Dephot agency (Deutscher Photodienst). On her return from Budapest, she enrolled in the studio of József Pécsi – the famous Hungarian photographer (1889-1956) – before leaving her birth country again, in 1933, to settle in Paris.

It was during this period of apprenticeship that her own aesthetic took shape, which marked her entire career, with the production of collages and photomontages inspired by the avant-garde movements of the 1930s (the Bauhaus, Surrealism, German Neue Sachlichkeit, Russian Constructivism). Paris was a cosmopolitan capital and Surrealism was at its height at the time. This movement heavily influenced Kati Horna’s style, both through its themes and its techniques, be it the narrative collage, superimposition or photomontage. Her photography was closely linked to the arts of the image, used as an illustrative technique and as a support for a poetics of the object. Her taste for stories and staged images are clearly evident. From 1933 she worked for the Lutetia-Press agency, for whom she did her first photo stories: Mercado de pulgas [Flea Market] (1933), which would not be published until 1986 in the Mexican periodical Foto Zoom, and Cafés de París (1934).

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Robert Capa in the Studio of József Pécsi
Budapest, 1933
Gelatin silver print
25.3 x 20.1cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled
Paris, 1937
From the Hitlerei series [Hitler series]
in collaboration with Wolfgang Burger
Gelatin silver print
16.8 x 12cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Spain And The Civil War

Photography, with its various possibilities, enables one to show, liberate and develop one’s own sensibility which can be expressed in graphic images.

And at the moment of pressing the shutter you had to keep the image, let your emotion, discovery and visual surprise flow, the moment had to be kept in your head. That’s what I call developing one’s visual memory.

Kati Horna

Between 1937 and 1939, Kati Horna covered the Spanish Civil War with great sensitivity. The Spanish Republican government asked her to produce images on the Civil War. Thus, between 1937 and 1939 she photographed the places where the major events of the war took place, in the Aragon province, in the country’s cities (Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona and Lerida), as well as a number of strategic villages in Republican Spain.

A collection of more than 270 negatives has survived from this period, today conserved in the Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica de España, Salamanca. They bear witness to the reality of the conflict at the front as well as, and above all, everyday life for the civilian population through a vision that was in empathy with the environment and the people. Committed to the anarchist cause, she became the editor of the periodical Umbral, where she would meet her future husband, the Andalusian anarchist José Horna – and worked on the cultural periodical of the National Confederation of Labour, Libre-Studio. She also collaborated on the periodicals Tierra y Libertad, Tiempos Nuevos and Mujeres Libres, publications that are being exhibited for the first time. At the time, her work was distinguished by its photomontages, which have both a symbolic and metaphorical character.

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled, Vélez Rubio, Almeria province, Andalusia, Spanish Civil War
1937
Gelatin silver print
25.5 x 20.5cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Subida a la catedral [Ascending to the Cathedral], Spanish Civil War
Barcelona, 1938
Gelatin silver print (photomontage)
22.2 x 16.6cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Los Paraguas, mitin de la CNT [Umbrellas, Meeting of the CNT], Spanish Civil War
Barcelona, 1937
Gelatin silver print
24.2 x 19.2cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Mexico

I am in an existential crisis. Today everyone is running, today everyone is driving. My pictures? They were the product of a creative love, linked to my experiences and the way they were taken. I was never in a hurry.

S.nob was a joy… I don’t know why I enjoyed myself so much, but the facility that Salvador [Elizondo] and the team, and Juan [García Ponce] gave me, a great creativity came out of me.

Kati Horna

Kati Horna returned to Paris in 1939. Her husband, the Andalusian artist José Horna, enlisted in the Ebra division that covered the retreat of the Spanish civilians to France. In October, as soon as he reached Prats-de-Mollo, in the French Pyrenees, he was incarcerated in a camp for Spanish refugees. Kati Horna succeeded in getting him freed. They left for Paris where they were again harassed, obliging them to flee France for Mexico. Mexico would become her final homeland.

During her everyday life she came into contact with some of the extraordinary figures of Surrealism (Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret and Edward James) and the Panic movement (Alejandro Jodorowsky), as well as avant-garde Mexican artists, writers and architects (Mathias Goeritz, Germán Cueto, Pedro Friedeberg, Salvador Elizondo, Alfonso Reyes and Ricardo Legorreta).

Kati Horna established herself as a chronicler of the period, leaving for posterity a unique corpus. In Mexico, she worked as a reporter for periodicals such as Todo (1939), Nosotros (1944-1946), Mujeres (1958-1968), Mexico this Month (1958-1965), S.nob (1962) and Diseño (1968-1970). During the last 20 years of her life, she also taught photography at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the San Carlos Academy (Univesidad Nacional Autónoma de México), where she trained an entire generation of contemporary photographers.

Horna’s quotes come from the catalogue, co-published by the Jeu de Paume and the Museo Amparo

Cover of the magazine S.nob No. 2 (27 June 1962)

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled, La Castañeda psychiatric hospital, Mixcoac
Mexico, 1944
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled, Carnaval de Huejotzingo, Puebla
1941
Gelatin silver print
19.5 x 21.5cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000) 'Untitled, Oda a la necrofília series [Ode to Necrophilia]' Mexico 1962

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Untitled
Mexico, 1962
From the Oda a la necrofília series[Ode to Necrophilia]
Gelatin silver print
25.4 x 20.8cm
Museo Amparo Collection
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
El botellón [The Bottle]
Mexico, 1962
From theParaísos artificiales series[Artificial Paradises]
Gelatin silver print
24.4 x 18.9cm
Collection Museo Amparo
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Remedios Varo
Mexico, 1957
Gelatin silver print
25.3 x 20.3cm
Private collection
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Antonio Souza y su esposa Piti Saldivar [Antonio Souza and his Wife Piti Saldivar]
Mexico, 1959
Gelatin silver print
25 x 20.3cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
José Horna elaborando la maqueta de la casa de Edward James [José Horna Working on the Maquette for Edward James’s House]
Mexico, 1960
Gelatin silver print
25.3 x 20.3cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Mujer y máscara [Woman with Mask]
Mexico, 1963
Gelatin silver print
25 x 19.7 cm
Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna
© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Jeu de Paume
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75008 Paris
métro Concorde
Phone: 01 47 03 12 50

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Exhibition: ‘Knud Lonberg-Holm: The Invisible Architect’ at Ubu Gallery, New York Part 2

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th September, 2014

Curated from the private collection of Marc Dessauce

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Design for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition
West elevation
1922
Vintage photograph mounted on board
9 1/8 x 3 5/8 inches (23.2 x 9.2cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

The second part of this posting about the work of architect Knud Lonberg-Holm. “Backside-views of buildings and fire escapes, rather than historicist ornamental facades, are presented in their “unselfconscious beauty” in opposition to traditional, Pictorialist architectural photography.” You only have to look at the photographs of the city by Alfred Stieglitz or Berenice Abbott taken at around the same time to notice the difference – less romantic, more “modern” in their geometry and form.

If it weren’t for the shock of seeing 1920s cars at the bottom of some of the images (for example, Detroit, Rear Façade of a Hotel, 1924 below) you could almost believe that they had been made 40 years later, around the time of Bernd and Hilla Becher. These photographs are monumental, industrial, but are tinged with humanity – the billboards, cars, people and advertising signs that hover at the bottom or in the deep shadows of the image. Then look at the tonality and atmosphere of the images, including the vibration of light in the two Dazzlescapes (New York, Madison Square and New York, Times Square, both 1923 below).

I don’t think I have ever seen a better collection of images of city architecture.

See Part 1 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Ubu Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I’ve always been annoyed by rummaging through the past; the future interests me much more.”

Knud Lonberg-Holm

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Design for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition
West view axonometric
1922
Vintage photograph mounted on board
8 7/8 x 4 5/8 inches (22.5 x 11.7cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Equity Trust Building – Oblique View
1923
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 41
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 3/8 x 3 1/4 inches (11.1 x 8.3cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Woolworth Building – Oblique View
1923
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 40
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches (10.8 x 8.3cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Design for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition
Side elevation with Tribune sign visible
1922
Vintage photograph mounted on board
9 1/8 x 4 7/8 inches (23.2 x 12.4cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Design for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition
Preliminary side elevation
1922
Photograph mounted on board
9 x 4 5/8 inches (22.9 x 11.7cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Throughout the 1920s, he traveled to other American cities like Chicago and New York City, where, with a 35-millimetre handheld Leica, he took worm’s-eye views and extreme close-ups of skyscrapers, the back sides of buildings, fire escapes, billboards, and dazzling “lightscapes,” ignoring – for the most part – the facades of the buildings. Some of these images would appear, uncredited, in Erich Mendelsohn’s 1926 publication Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten, the first book on the “International Style” in American architecture. (Only in an expanded, later edition from 1928 is Lonberg-Holm credited for 17 of the images.)

Soon the photographs cropped up in design and architecture journals in Holland, Germany, and Russia. “They received acclaim for being progressive and dynamic presentations of technology, commerce, and urbanisation,” says Adam Boxer, founder and owner of Ubu Gallery. “To expose Lonberg-Holm’s role as photographer means one can situate him in his deserved role – a pioneer of New Photography.” As a correspondent for the avant-garde, having his images and writings appear in radical European Modernist reviews – such as the Functionalist-Constructivist Swiss bulletin ABC Beitrage zum Bauen (Contributions on Building) and the Dutch i10 – were of crucial importance, since they circulated amongst members of the European vanguard. By the 1930s, however, Lonberg-Holm had given up architecture for marketing research, and his photographs, never signed or dated, no longer circulated. …

Lonberg-Holm also questioned how architecture was practiced and he pioneered the idea of the life cycle of a building. Decades before William McDonough discovered cradle-to-cradle thinking, Lonberg-Holm had been trying to put across the concept that all buildings, like all organisms, are subject to a life cycle, as predictable and as inevitable as the cycles in nature. “The building cycle involves research, design, construction, use, and elimination – and repeat,” wrote an editor in the January 1960 issue of Architectural Forum. “One of Lonberg-Holm’s chief contentions is that design that anticipates the cycle as a whole makes each succeeding step more rational and easier… Lonberg-Holm’s principle, ‘Anticipate remodelling in the initial design’, carries a corollary, which might be put this way, in keeping with the very important principle of design articulation: ‘Design each “system” in the building – the structural system, the heating or the air-conditioning system, the wiring, the plumbing, etc. – to be self-contained for easy assembly, with interconnections to other systems held to a minimum and made easy to alter’.

Extract from Paul Makovsky. “The Invisible Architect of Invisible Architecture,” on the Metropolis website [Online] Cited 18/07/2014. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 67
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches (10.8 x 8.3cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit, Rear Areaway
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 91
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (11.4 x 8.9cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

During the 1920s, Lonberg-Holm traveled to American cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York. With his 35-millimetre Leica camera, he took extreme close-ups of skyscrapers (such as this rear view Detroit Hotel, above), the back sides of buildings, fire escapes, billboards, and dazzling nighttime views.

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit
1924
Variant cropping reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 21
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 3/8 x 3 3/8 inches (11.1 x 8.6cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit, Rear Façade of a Hotel
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 89
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 3 3/8 inches (11.4 x 8.6cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Chicago, Skyscraper of the Second Period
c. prior to 1926
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 77 (right)
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 3/8 x 3 3/8 inches (11.1 x 8.6cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Chicago, 2 Skyscrapers
c. prior to 1926
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 75
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (11.4 x 8.9cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm: The Invisible Architect

“Lonberg-Holm was the first architect in my knowledge to talk about the ultimately invisible architecture. In 1929, when I first met him, he said the greatest architect in history would be the one who finally developed the capability to give humanity completely effective environmental control without any visible structure and machinery. Thus we have in our day an unsung Leonardo of the building industry, whose scientific foresight and design competence are largely responsible for the present world-around state of advancement of the building arts.”

Buckminster Fuller, 1968

The historical documents in this collection represent a hitherto unexplored aspect of the influence of European modernist architects – specifically, those who emigrated to the United States early and voluntarily, before the rise of fascism necessitated the wholesale evacuation of the European avant-garde. The seemingly disparate archive of photographs, drawings, diagrams and correspondence can be grouped around a unifying theme: the realisation of the avant-garde ambition of integration and control of architectural production through industrialisation; and around a central figure: the architect Knud Lonberg-Holm. The documents bear witness to a complex history that is not easily tracked elsewhere. This is due, in part, to the fact that they bridge two continents, and in part because they unveil processes of reform, such as the scientific conversion of the institutions of architectural practice and the transformation of the project, that were aimed at the most mundane level of building, not at exceptional structures. Moreover, the documents show this professional and anonymous destiny together in line with inversely artistic and revolutionary origins. Thus, the archive documents a phenomenon of cultural disappearance, bringing missing substance to the link between the Americanism of the European avant-garde and the history of modern architecture in the United States.

A native of Denmark, which he leaves in 1923 for the United States, Knud Lonberg-Holm (1895-1972) is the emblematic figure of this disappearance. Initially considered a “pioneer of modern architecture” by the anthropologists of the 1920s, and even held representative of “the space-time conception” by Henry Russell Hitchcock, his true contributions will be ever more unacknowledged as they become more fundamental. First of the modernist émigrés in the United States, he becomes the obliged correspondent for the European avant-garde, in particular for the De Stijl group and also the Berlin Constructivists, with whom he was closest. He was a contributor to both ABC and i10, a member of ASNOVA, a collaborator of Buckminster Fuller, and also the American delegate to CIAM with Richard Neutra. His experiments with photography in the early 1920s (diffused widely by J.J.P. Oud, Moholy-Nagy, Erich Mendelsohn, and others) were received with critical success in Europe and the USSR. This is due as much to the revolutionary use of extreme viewpoints from below and above, as to the renewal of the iconographic sources of modernism: the substitution of the imagery of the grain elevators and the “balancing of the masses,” for an aesthetic of structure and tension gleaned from the metallic skeletons of unfinished skyscrapers. In Lonberg-Holm, this aesthetic schism is accompanied by a renouncement of the project – a sort of Duchampian abandonment of the traditional identity of the architect, which intervenes at the moment he arrives in his work at a controlled resolution of the opposing influences of rationalism and neo-plasticism, for example in the McBride Residence project of 1926.

Lonberg-Holm’s institutional itinerary begins at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1924-1925, where he introduces a basic design course similar to that of the Soviet Vkhutemas. Moving to New York in 1929, he enters the organisation of the F.W. Dodge publishing corporation, initially at the journal The Architectural Record, where he devises both content and format, and then as the head of the research department of Sweet’s Catalog Service, the indispensable architect’s handbook of building products. The reorganisation of Sweet’s Catalog, perhaps Lonberg-Holm’s most tangible contribution to modern architectural production in America, gives substance to his doctrinaire activity of the 1930s, concerned with urban obsolescence, cycles of production, and information theory. In collaboration with Czech designer Ladislav Sutnar, Sweet’s Catalog becomes a complete oeuvre of industrial and plastic organisation. Its critical and enduring importance in the process of architectural production makes it an implemented avant-garde project, at an appreciable scale, and testament to Lonberg-Holm’s heretofore-unacknowledged influence on the development of a truly modern American architecture.

Marc Dessauce, 2003

Marc Dessauce (1962-2004) was an architectural historian who lived and worked in NYC and Paris. His research, exhibitions, and writings focused on the foundations of both American and European avant-garde architecture in the twentieth century. Marc assembled this archive between 1986 and 1995 when he was a PhD candidate at Columbia University in the department of Art History. His book The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in ’68, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1999.

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
New York, Madison Square
1923
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 31
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches (10.5 x 8.3cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
New York, Times Square
1923
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 6
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/4 x 3 3/8 inches (10.8 x 8.6cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten

Seventeen of Lonberg-Holm’s photographs appeared uncredited in Erich Mendelsohn’s 1926 book, a very influential volume on modern American architecture. Only in a later, expanded edition was Lonberg-Holm given credit. El Lissitzky was so impressed with Amerika that he said the volume “thrills us like a dramatic film. Before our eyes move pictures that are absolutely unique. In order to understand some of the photographs you must lift the book over your head and rotate it.”

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Sweet’s Display
Exposition des Techniques Américianes de l’Habitation et de l’Ubranisme (Information 1, 2, 3)
Paris, Grand Palais, June 14-July 21, 1946
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches (18.1 x 18.4cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Sweet’s Display
Exposition des Techniques Américianes de l’Habitation et de l’Ubranisme (Biblioteque SS)
Paris, Grand Palais, June 14-July 21, 1946
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 1/8 x 7 1/8 inches (18.1 x 18.1cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

A diagram from Development Index illustrating the interrelations of cultural and social factors, which Lonberg-Holm and Larson considered necessary to the practice of design. The index was a screening system intended to manage incoming and outgoing streams of data.

Larson and Knud Lonberg-Holm later collaborated on the idea of a “Development Index” – a systems-thinking approach and research tool that studied the interaction of human activity, environmental relations, and communications with the idea to improve the built environment. It was an attempt to manage information flow and, in a pre-Internet sort of way, provide relevant data through a centralised system, using what was then state-of-the-art media such as microfilm, microfiche, and electronics.

Wendingen
“Skyscraper as a solution of the Housing Problem”
No. 3, 1923
Paperbound volume
12 7/8 x 13 inches (32.7 x 33cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Shelter
Cover design by Knud Lonberg-Holm
April 1938
Magazine cover
11 x 9 inches (27.9 x 22.9cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Shelter now
Cover design by Knud Lonberg-Holm
Vol. 2, No. 4, May 1932
Magazine cover
12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm with Latislav Sutnar. 'Multi-Measure (MM) Metal Enclosures' catalog cover c. 1942-1944

Knud Lonberg-Holm with Latislav Sutnar
Multi-Measure (MM) Metal Enclosures
c. 1942-1944
Cover of catalog
11 x 8 1/2 inches (27.9 x 21.6cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

The cover of a catalog for Multi-Measure Metal Enclosures, Inc., designed with Ladislav Sutnar between 1942 and 1944. Lonberg-Holm collaborated with architect C. Theodore Larson at F.W. Dodge Corporation’s Sweet’s Catalog division to develop a systematic approach to organising the information needed by the building industry. When graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar later joined him, they radically altered the way business information was streamlined, designed, and packaged, becoming pioneers of “information design” along the way.

i10
“America, Reflections” (by Knud Lonberg-Holm)
No. 15, October 20, 1928
Paperbound volume
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches (29.8 x 21cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Lonberg-Holm’s 1928 essay on America for i10 – focused on the country’s obsession with time and efficiency – shows that the fields of communications, the car industry, elevators, railways, and the movie industry were more important to him. He wrote: “Time-study is a profession. And a highly paid profession. What the [Saint] Peters church was for the European Renaissance, Henry Ford’s assembly line is for America of today. The most perfect expression for a civilisation whose god is efficiency. Detroit is the Mecca of this civilisation. And the pilgrims come from all over the world to meditate before this always-moving line.”

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Photograph of “Modern Architecture” at Fifth Avenue
c. 1923-1924
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (11.4 x 7cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Automobile Plant
Detroit, 1931
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches (13.3 x 10.8cm)
Titled on verso
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Photograph of Longberg-Holm
c. 1923-1924
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (11.4 x 7cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
48th Street/St. Nicholas Church scaffolding
c. 1923-1924
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (11.4 x 7cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Photograph of Antenna
c. 1923-1924
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (11.4 x 8.9cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Note from Iwao Yamawaki to Knud Lonberg-Holm
Dessau, July 9, 1931
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972) and Iwao Yamawaki (Japanese, 1898-1987) (attributed) 'Knud & his wife Ethel outside of Bauhaus' 1931

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Iwao Yamawaki (Japanese, 1898-1987) (attributed)
Knud & his wife Ethel outside of Bauhaus
1931
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 3/8 x 3 3/8 inches (11.1 x 8.6cm)
Dated & inscribed on verso
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

This photo, attributed to the Japanese Bauhaus-trained photographer Iwao Yamawaki, shows Lonberg-Holm and his wife, Ethel (who later became an art director for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency), at the Bauhaus in 1931. A friend of Bauhaus instructors László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Hannes Meyer, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe, Lonberg-Holm taught the first foundational course based on the Bauhaus model at the University of Michigan in 1924.

Knud Lonberg-Holm (1895-1972), an overlooked but highly influential Modernist architect, photographer, and pioneer of information design
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Ubu Gallery
416 East 59th Street
New York 10022
Phone: 212 753 4444

Opening hour:
Monday – Friday 11am – 6pm

Ubu Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Knud Lonberg-Holm: The Invisible Architect’ at Ubu Gallery, New York Part 1

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th September 2014

Curated from the private collection of Marc Dessauce

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
The New – The Coming, Detroit, Streetcars
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 73
Vintage gelatin silver print
3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches (8.3 x 10.8cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

I am so excited by this monster two-part posting about the work of architect Knud Lonberg-Holm. His drawings and models are incredible and his photographs of industry and skyscrapers a revelation. The textures and inky blackness of his Dazzlescapes and the New Photography images of skyscrapers (both in Part 2) mark these images as the greatest collection of photographs of skyscrapers that I have ever seen. More comment tomorrow but for now just look at the dark Gotham-esque photograph The New – The Coming, Detroit, Streetcars (1924, below). The streetcar reminds me of the armoured trains so popular during the inter-war years and during World War II. And what a title: The New – The Coming…

Dr Marcus Bunyan

See Part 2 of the posting.

Many thankx to Ubu Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Lonberg-Holm was the first architect in my knowledge ever to talk about the ultimately invisible architecture. In 1929, when I first met him, he said the greatest architect in history would be the one who finally developed the capability to give humanity completely effective environmental control without any visible structure and machinery.”

Buckminster Fuller

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
View from the roof
Detroit, 1924
Vintage gelatin silver print
2 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches (7 x 11.4cm) approx.
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 71 (top)
Vintage gelatin silver print
3 3/8 x 4 3/8 inches (8.6 x 11.1cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Detroit, A New Street
1924
Reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika, p. 71 (bottom)
Vintage gelatin silver print
3 3/8 x 4 3/8 inches (8.6 x 11.1cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection; Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Ubu Gallery is pleased to present Knud Lonberg-Holm: The Invisible Architect, a debut exhibition devoted to this overlooked, yet highly influential, 20th Century modernist. Never-before-seen photographs, architectural drawings, letters, graphic design, and ephemera from Lonberg-Holm’s remarkably diverse career will be on view through August 1, 2014. The exhibition, which consists of selections from the extensive archive assembled by architectural historian Marc Dessauce, will solidify the importance of this emblematic figure in early 20th Century cultural and architectural history. Metropolis Magazine, the national publication of architecture and design, will publish an article on Knud Lonberg-Holm to coincide with this groundbreaking exhibition.

Born in Denmark, Knud Lonberg-Holm (January 15, 1895 – January 2, 1972), was an architect, photographer, author, designer, researcher, and teacher. Lonberg-Holm’s early work in Denmark and Germany initially associated him with the Berlin Constructivist and Dutch De Stijl groups. An émigré to America in 1923, Lonberg-Holm was a fundamental correspondent with prominent European architects and their modernist counterparts in the U.S. The exhibition will feature a selection of letters to Lonberg-Holm from a pantheon of the European avant-garde including László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, Theo Van Doesburg, Buckminster Fuller, Hannes Meyer, J.J.P. Oud, El Lissitzky, and Richard Neutra.

From 1924–1925, Lonberg-Holm was a colleague of Eliel Saarinen at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he taught a course in basic design modeled on the famed Bauhaus Vorkurs, the first-ever introduced in U.S. design schools. An agent of inter-continental communication, his reports on the state of American architecture appeared abroad. Lonberg-Holm’s 1928 article, Amerika: Reflections, featured buildings on the University of Michigan campus and appeared in the Dutch avant-garde publication i10, which employed Moholy-Nagy as its photo editor. The article not only contributed to international discourse on the building industry, but also touched on the “time-space convention,” a subject Lonberg-Holm would explore throughout his career. This publication, among others, will be on display.

Lonberg-Holm’s interest in American industry is best viewed in his collection of photographs taken between 1924-1926. These works document his pioneering views of industry and technology in burgeoning, jazz-age New York, Detroit, and Chicago; they would appear later, un-credited, in Erich Mendelsohn’s seminal 1926 publication Amerika, the first book on the ‘International Style’ in American architecture. Thirteen vintage photographs reproduced in Amerika will be on exhibit, as well as additional early photographs depicting technological advancements, such as cable cars and radio antennae, American culture in mass crowds and billboards, and the commercial architecture of skyscrapers and factories. Backside-views of buildings and fire escapes, rather than historicist ornamental facades, are presented in their “unselfconscious beauty” in opposition to traditional, pictorialist architectural photography. The content of the works coupled with progressive view points, like worm’s eye perspectives and extreme close-ups, align them squarely within the then emerging ‘New Photography’. El Lissitzky wrote that the dynamic photos “grip us like a dramatic film.”1 Mendelsohn’s publication, featuring Lonberg-Holm’s dynamic photography, received immediate acclaim, domestically and abroad.

While still in Germany, Lonberg-Holm created a submission for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922. Although never officially submitted, the project was published widely in magazines and newspapers, alongside other prominent architects’ designs. From his office in the historically designed Donner Schloss in Altona, Germany, Lonberg-Holm envisioned a modern construction for Chicago that incorporated references to American mass culture, specifically the automobile. The West elevations on view show the Chicago Tribune sign, which includes circular signage reminiscent of headlights. The Side elevation exhibited clearly demonstrates how the printing plant function of the ground floors of the building, rendered in black, are visually distinct from the offices of the higher floors, rendered in white with black accents for visual continuity throughout the building. Lonberg-Holm’s proposed construction, whose outward visual design distinguished its internal functions, was reproduced in L’Architecture vivante, La Cite, Le Courbusier’s Almanach d’architecture in France and Walter Gropius’ Internationale Architektur in Munich; the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung displayed his building next to that of Mies van der Rohe and a full spread devoted to the skyscraper, featuring Lonberg-Holm’s Chicago design adjacent to plans by Walter Gropius, Saarinen and van der Rohe, appeared in H. Th. Wijdeveld’s November / December 1923 issue of the innovative publication Wendingen.

The drawings Lonberg-Holm created during this first decade as an émigré are striking for their early use of European modernist, particularly Neo-plastic, influences. He was close with the DeStijl movement in Holland, and corresponded with both Theo van Doesburg and J.J.P. Oud, with whom he would continue to work within CIAM, the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Modern. Early renderings done by Lonberg-Holm in the U.S. demonstrate an affinity for DeStijl principles. His plans for the 1926 MacBride residence in Ann Arbor are dynamic and asymmetrical, with intersecting planes in simple primary colors. Surely the first American allusion to Gerrit Rietvel’s iconic 1924 Schröder House in Utrecht, Holland, the MacBride residence is one of the first ‘International Style’ modernist houses designed in the Western hemisphere.

Lonberg-Holm’s importance to and knowledge of European architectural trends resulted in an invitation by Jane Heap to participate in the 1927 landmark New York exhibition, Machine Age, which was heralded as “the first international exposition of architecture held in America.” This exhibition, held at the New York Scientific American Building, May 16-28, stressed the new mechanical world and its key player, the Engineer. Lonberg-Holm’s 1925 Detroit project, Radio Broadcasting Station, was featured. The New York’s review of the exhibition explicitly referenced Lonberg-Holm’s project, noting its “delicacy and exquisite technique of execution.”

Lonberg-Holm worked with the F.W. Dodge corporation for 30 years, first in the division responsible for The Architectural Record (1930-1932), and then as head of the research department of Sweet’s Catalog Service (1932-1960.) At The Architectural Record, Lonberg-Holm acted as research editor and wrote technical news, a precursor to his lifelong interest in data-driven analytics. During his New York based employment, Lonberg-Holm’s involvement with international architectural trends did not diminish. In addition to prolonged correspondence with the various directors of the Bauhaus, including Hannes Meyer, he and his wife Ethel would visit the Bauhaus at Dessau in 1931. In 1946, Lonberg-Holm was also ultimately a candidate to replace Moholy-Nagy as director of the Institute of Design in Chicago.

At the same time, Lonberg-Holm was involved in domestic architecture and building theory. Richard Neutra would reach out to Lonberg-Holm in 1928 for illustrations and photographs to include in his account of the modern architecture movement in the US; he would approach him again in 1932 to lecture on the West Coast. Lonberg-Holm and Neutra were the “American” representatives to CIAM. It was Lonberg-Holm who nominated Buckminster Fuller and Theodore Larson for membership into CIAM in 1932.

What little scholarship exists about Knud Lonberg-Holm briefly examines his nearly twenty-year relationship with the Czech pioneering graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar, with whom Lonberg-Holm worked at Sweet’s Catalog Service. From 1942 through 1960 at the research department of Sweet’s, the bible for all the building trades, Lonberg-Holm and Sutnar revolutionized the catalog by standardising information techniques. They presented systemised communication through a simple, modern, and intelligible visual language that influenced all areas of architectural and graphic design. Together, Lonberg-Holm and Sutnar co-authored Catalog Design (1944), Designing Information (1947), and Catalog Design Progress (1950).

The vital roles and communication between city planning, architecture, and civil productivity where important to Lonberg-Holm and would be explored throughout his career. In A. Lawerence Kocher’s letter to Lonberg-Holm, the article “Architecture-or organized space” is referenced. This 1929 essay, published in Detroit, addressed the “building problem” in the US – the “an-organic structure of its cities” – and proposed “a new conception of city-planning based on a clearer understanding of the organic functions of a community.” Lonberg-Holm would be an important participant in the city planning survey of Detroit, one of CIAM’s analytical initiatives in 1932-1933. Field Patterns and Fields of Activity, a visual diagram further illustrating the interconnectivity of intelligence, welfare, production, and control in a community, graphically illustrates these early principles.

Collaboration was critical to Lonberg-Holm, who would work with Theodore Larson to improve information indexing and the production cycle. Field Patterns, as well as the visuals for Planning for Productivity (1940), were components of Lonberg-Holm’s collaboration with Theodore Larson. Lonberg-Holm sought to apply some of the theories set forth in Development Index. This collaborative project with Larson was published by the University of Michigan in 1953 and focused on the relationship between community, industry, and education, analytical theories that were proposed by Lonberg-Holm during the formation of the University’s Laboratory of Architectural Research. Lonberg-Holm’s 1949 visual diagram of the relationship between the university, the building industry, and the community, is on view, as well as the Sutnar-designed steps of Planning for Productivity. Lonberg-Holm had returned to the University as a guest lecturer and professor in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the suggestion of Lonberg-Holm, Theordore Larson was among the new faculty hired at the University in 1948, along with Walter Sanders and William Muschenheim, whom Lonberg-Holm had worked with in the Detroit survey.

In 1949, Lonberg-Holm was issued a Dymaxion License and became a trustee to the Fuller Institute/Research Foundation; among the trustees are his contemporaries George Nelson and Charles Eames. Initially meeting Buckminster Fuller in c. 1929, he and Fuller would correspond throughout Lonberg-Holm’s life. Lonberg-Holm was a member of the Structural Studies Associates (SSA), a short-lived group of architects in the 1930s surrounding Fuller and his briefly published architectural magazine Shelter. A number of Shelter issues are on view, many of which have contributions by Lonberg-Holm; the cover of the May 1932 issue was designed by Lonberg-Holm. Planning for Productivity and Development Index were later data-driven projects that furthered the SSA’s and Fuller’s principles – that the evolution of science and technology would influence social progress and could be beneficial to the community only through research, analysis and macroapplication.

Arriving to the US a decade before his European contemporaries, Lonberg-Holm occupied a unique position as a cultural bridge, communicating between the US and Europe in a period when the state of art and architecture was radically changing. He exposed his students and colleagues to European protagonists of avant-garde architecture theory while enthusiastically exploring American industry and building. Exclusively through collaboration, Lonberg-Holm worked to modernise both architecture and design. Integral to Lonberg-Holm’s principles was that technology alone could not suffice as the sole perpetuator of architecture – advancements in building and new designs needed to promote human culture in an ever-evolving manner where new information was continuously integrated into design theory. Throughout his career, Lonberg-Holm embodied the antithesis of the stereotype architect, egocentric and insulated from the community in which his designs were to exist. From his beginnings at The Architectural Record to his final project, Plan for Europe 2000: Role of the Mass Media in Information and Communication, Lonberg-Holm held to the belief that a collective approach, with applied research, could form a generative knowledge base that could be cultivated for altruistic means.

Text from the Ubu Gallery website

1/ Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present, London, Seeker & Warburg, 1982, p. 1.

Unknown photographer
Portrait of Knud Lonberg-Holm
New York, 1950s (prior to 1960)
Vintage gelatin silver print
6 7/8 x 10 inches (17.5 x 25.4cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Unknown photographer
Portrait of Knud Lonberg-Holm
New York, 1950s (prior to 1960)
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 7/8 x 9 1/2 inches (20 x 24.1cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Le Corbusier at CIAM Conference
c. 1954-1964
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 5/8 x 8 3/8 inches (14.3 x 21.3cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Buckminster Fuller, Lonberg-Holm and other
Bayside, New York
Nd
Vintage gelatin silver print
3 x 4 1/4 inches (7.6 x 10.8cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Photograph of the Dymaxion Car
Bridgeport, Connecticut, July 21, 1933
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 5/8 x 9 3/4 inches (19.4 x 24.8cm)
Stamped on verso
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

In July of 1933, the Dymaxion car was introduced in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it caused a great stir. Lonberg-Holm can be seen holding the car door open while the artist Diego Rivera (who was in attendance with his wife and artist Frida Kahlo) looks on, coat on his arm.

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
Bridgeport, Connecticut, July 21, 1933
Vintage gelatin silver print
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Radio Broadcasting Station
Photograph of Model
Detroit, 1925
Vintage gelatin silver print
4 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches (12.4 x 17.5cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Radio Broadcasting Station
Photograph of Model
Detroit, 1925
Vintage gelatin silver print
5 3/8 x 7 1/2 inches (13.7 x 19.1cm)
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Knud Lonberg-Holm (Danish, 1895-1972)
Photograph of Chicago’s new skyline
North of Randolph Street
All new since 1926 except Wrigley and Tribune buildings
May 1929
Vintage gelatin silver print
2 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches (5.7 x 11.4cm)
Titled on verso
The Knud Lonberg-Holm Archive from the Marc Dessauce Collection
Courtesy Ubu Gallery, New York

Ubu Gallery
416 East 59th Street
New York 10022
Phone: 212 753 4444

Opening hours:
Monday – Friday 11am – 6pm

Ubu Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Philippe Halsman, Astonish Me!’ at The Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Exhibition dates: 29th January – 11th May, 2014

Curators: Anne Lacoste, Curator at the Musée de l’Elysée, and Sam Stourdzé, Director of the Musée de l’Elysée

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979) 'The Versatile Jean Cocteau' 1949 from the exhibition 'Philippe Halsman, Astonish Me!' at The Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, January - May, 2014

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
The Versatile Jean Cocteau
1949
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

He “photographed a little bit of everything: animals, Paris, the homeless, underwater, nudes, advertising, fashion and, above all, celebrities portraits, from Ali, Einstein, Churchill, Hepburn, Warhol, Hitchcock and, of course, Marilyn Monroe.”

You could say that he was a versatile photographer, doing everything to pay the bills and anything to make interesting images. He never stopped experimenting with the image, but it is the “straight” portraits that I find are his strongest work. Not the “jump” photos, Monroe, or the surreal experiments with Dalí, much as they delight, but the portraits of Hepburn, Einstein and Churchill for example.

Look at the photograph of Winston Churchill (1951, below). What a way to portray the great man. The bulk of the overcoat, the slope of the shoulders (evincing a certain weariness), the famous Homburg hat pulled down on the head, the leader staring into the tranquil landscape. But what makes the image is the seam down the back of the overcoat which speaks to history itself – the backbone of the country, the never say die spirit, stiff upper lip, the rock of the British empire which Nazism could not defeat – epitomising the British bulldog spirit. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Solid. Immovable. What a glorious photograph to capture that essence.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Elysée Lausanne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Shortly before World War I, the greatest sensation in Paris was the Russian Imperial Ballet under Serge Diaghilev. The divine Nijinsky and Pavlova were dancing for him, Stravinsky composed, Picasso, Bakst, and Chagall were painting scenery for him. To work for Diaghilev was the highest accolade for an artist. Jean Cocteau approached Diaghilev and asked: ‘What can I do for you?’ Diaghilev looked at him and answered: ‘Etonne-moi!’ (‘Astonish me!’) These two words can be considered as a motto, as a slogan for the development of the modern art which followed.”

Philippe Halsman

“Photography is a separate form of expression since it falls between two art forms… It’s not only trying to give us a visual impression of reality, like painting and graphic arts, but also to communicate and inform us the way writing does. No writer should be blamed for writing about subjects that exist only in his imagination. And no photographer should be blamed when, instead of capturing reality, he tries to show things that he has only seen in his imagination.”

Philippe Halsman

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979) 'Folle Iseult' 1944 from the exhibition 'Philippe Halsman, Astonish Me!' at The Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, January - May, 2014

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Folle Iseult
1944
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

“In my serious work I am striving for the essence of things and for goals which are possibly unobtainable. On the other hand, everything humorous has great attraction for me, and a childish streak leads me into all kinds of frivolous endeavour.”

Photographer Philippe Halsman had an exemplary career. Over a forty-year period, in Paris during the 1930s and in New York from 1940 on, he developed a broad range of activities (portraits, fashion, reportage, advertisements, personal projects, commissions from individuals and institutions). The Musée de l’Elysée presents the first study dedicated to his entire body of work, with a selection of over 300 pieces.

This project, produced in collaboration with the Philippe Halsman Archive, includes many exclusive unseen elements of the photographer’s work (contact sheets, annotated contact prints, preliminary proofs, original photomontages and mock-ups). The exhibition shows Philippe Halsman’s creative process and reveals a unique approach to photography: a means of expression to explore.

Born in 1906 in Riga, Latvia, Halsman studied engineering in Dresden before moving to Paris, where he opened a photographic studio in 1932. His years in Paris already heralded the approach he was to develop throughout his long career. A studio and reportage photographer, Halsman took inspiration from the contemporary art scene and participated in promoting it. Though he specialised in portraiture, he also branched out into advertising and publishing, which were thriving at the time. In 1940, the German invasion brought Halsman’s prosperous career to a halt, leading him to flee with his family to New York. Though initially unknown, he succeeded in establishing himself on the American market in under a year, and his studio soon became successful. Halsman stood out for his “psychological” approach to portraiture.

He distinguished himself in this area with his vast portrait gallery of celebrities (actors, industrialists, politicians, scientists, writers). Some of these images, such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill or Albert Einstein, became icons. He produced the largest number of covers (101) for Life magazine, the first weekly magazine to be illustrated only by photographs.

Halsman’s photography is characterised by a direct approach, masterful technique and a particular attention to detail. His work testifies to his constant research and his interest in all forms of technical and aesthetic experimentation, which he applied to a wide variety of subjects. For Halsman, photography was an excellent way of giving his imagination free reign. He was especially interested in mises en scène – in the form of single images or fictional series. He met Salvador Dalí in 1941 and the artist turned out to be the ideal accomplice. Their fruitful collaboration lasted 37 years. Philippe Halsman also introduced innovations through more personal creations such as the “photo-interview book” or ‘jumpology’.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne website

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Winston Churchill
1951
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Albert Einstein
1947
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Audrey Hepburn
1955
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Sammy Davis Jr
1965
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Presentation of the exhibition

In 1921, Philippe Halsman found his father’s old camera, and spoke of a “miracle” when he developed his first glass plates in the family’s bathroom sink. He was 15 years old, and this was the first encounter with photography of someone who was to become one of the leading photographers of the 20th century. This exhibition, produced by the Musée de l’Elysée in collaboration with the Philippe Halsman Archive, showcases the American photographer’s entire career for the first time, from his beginnings in Paris in the 1930s to the tremendous success of his New York studio between 1940 and 1970.

Halsman was able to go to Paris thanks to the support of French minister Paul Painlevé – whose son Jean, a scientific filmmaker, gave him one of the best cameras of the time upon his arrival. He remained in Paris for ten years, until 1940. Over that period, he collaborated with the magazines Vogue, Vu and Voilà and created portraits of numerous celebrities like Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier and André Malraux. He exhibited his work several times at the avant-garde Pléiade gallery, alongside photographers like Laure Albin Guillot, whose work was exhibited at Musée de l’Elysée in 2013.

Fleeing Nazism, he left Paris in 1940 and moved to New York. There, he worked for many American magazines including Life, which brought him into contact with the century’s top celebrities – Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Duke Ellington, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon, Albert Einstein to name only a few. Halsman shot 101 covers for Life magazine. Far from restricting himself to photographing celebrities, throughout his whole life Halsman never stopped experimenting and pushing the limits of his medium. He collaborated with Salvador Dalí for over thirty years and invented ‘jumpology’, which consisted in photographing personalities in the middle of jumping, offering a more natural, spontaneous portrait of his subjects.

The exhibition Philippe Halsman, Astonish me! is divided into four sections illustrating memorable periods, collaborations and themes in the photographer’s work and life.

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Expérimentation pour un portrait de femme (Experimentation for a portrait of a woman)
1931-1940
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Affiche exposition Pleiade (Poster for exhibition at La Pléiade gallery)
1936
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

“When I arrived in America in 1940 I had to adapt to the American style, that is to say, produce photographs that were technically perfect, clear, precise and properly modelled by the light without being distorted. Once, to accentuate the coldness of a rainy landscape I added a blue gelatin to my transparent film. Wilson Hicks took this gelatin off saying: ‘You’re cheating, Philippe’. Any hint of artifice was considered dishonest.”

Philippe Halsman

Paris in the 1930s

Philippe Halsman was born in Riga, Latvia in 1906. When he was 22, his father died in a hiking accident in Austrian Tyrol, and Philippe Halsman was wrongly convicted of his murder in a highly anti-Semitic climate. He was freed thanks to his sister’s support; she organised the support of prominent European intellectuals, who endorsed his innocence.

He went to Paris, where he began his career as a photographer, quickly distinguishing himself through his portrait technique. He explored various genres, such as views of Paris, nudes and fashion. His work was exhibited three times at the La Pléiade gallery, a famous avant-garde gallery where artists like Man Ray, André Kertész and Brassaï presented their works.

Focus on La Pléiade gallery

Founded by publisher Jacques Schiffrin in the spring of 1931 and located in the heart of the Latin Quarter, this art gallery was one of the first to present photographic exhibitions, and it started specialising in this field in April 1933 under directorship of Rose Sévèk. Dedicated to contemporary photography, the program incorporated its new practices and applications. It was one of the places where New Photography was promoted in the form of solo, group or thematic exhibitions.

It was probably through his friend Jean Painlevé that Halsman entered in contact with La Pléiade gallery. He was given a first solo exhibition, Portraits and Nudes, which ran from March 28 to April 30, 1936. The following year, his name became associated with the New Vision movement in the context of two group exhibitions: Portraits of Writers (April 17 to May 14, 1937) which included Emmanuel Sougez, Rogi André, Roger Parry and others; La Parisienne de 1900… à 1937 (June 4-30, 1937), which included photographs by Florence Henri and Maurice Tabard. It was one of the last exhibitions at the gallery, which was sold a few months later in October, to Paul Magné.

Having initially been unable to flee wartime Paris, Halsman finally received an emergency visa in 1940 thanks to a letter from Albert Einstein to Eleanor Roosevelt, making it possible for him to join his family, who had left six months earlier.

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Marilyn Monroe jump
1959
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

“Of the group of starlets only Marilyn emerged. Still photographers discovered her natural talent for flirting with the camera lens, and her blond looks of instant availability made her America’s most popular pin-up girl. Marilyn felt that the lens was not just a glass eye, but the symbol of the eyes of millions of men. She knew how to woo this lens better than any actress I ever photographed.”

Philippe Halsman

Portraits

Champion of the direct approach, Philippe Halsman also experimented with a wide range of techniques in order to capture the essence of his subjects and express their individuality. Many portraits became iconic images such as his 101 Life magazine covers.

Focus on Marilyn Monroe

Philippe Halsman photographed Marilyn Monroe on several occasions between 1949 and 1959. This important corpus traces the actress’s career and reveals the photographer’s varied approach during this period. In the autumn of 1949, Halsman was sent to Hollywood by Life magazine to do a report on eight young models embarking on acting careers. Halsman photographed them in four scenes he imposed (the approach of a monster, embracing a lover, reacting to a funny story and drinking a favourite drink). He quickly noticed the talents of the young Marilyn Monroe.

This opinion was confirmed three years later when Life commissioned him to do a feature on the actress entitled “The Talk of Hollywood”. These shots, some in colour and some in black and white, illustrated the actresses’s everyday life and talents. She acted out a series of scenes, humorously presenting the different stages of the strategy she used when being interviewed for roles. Most importantly, Halsman created several emblematic images of the actress and helped promote her by giving her a chance to have her first Life magazine cover.

In 1954, Halsman welcomed Marilyn Monroe to his New York studio. Halsman’s photographs reflect the ‘sex symbol’ image she cultivated. However, he managed to shoot a more natural portrait of the actress by asking her to jump in the air. There was only a few images of this type because when Halsman explained his ‘jumpology’ concept, Marilyn Monroe, frightened by the idea of revealing her personality, refused to repeat the experiment.

It took five years before she agreed to go along with ‘jumpology’. Marilyn Monroe had become a star by the time Life magazine offered to feature her on its cover in 1959 to illustrate a major article on Philippe Halsman’s ‘jumpology’. She treated it as a request for a performance. Over the course of three hours, the actress jumped over 200 times in front of Halsman’s lens, in order to achieve the “perfect jump”.

Several times Halsman suggested to Marilyn Monroe that they continue this collaboration, but without success. The actress was then at a turning point in her life that was foreshadowing her decline. However, Halsman continued his photographic work on the actress by creating new images, or more precisely variations of portraits he had previously shot. These compositions – montages of prints cut out and rephotographed together expressing the idea of movement, or reworked images transposed in negative format are characteristic of Halsman’s approach in the 1960s. Ten years later, he created a portrait of Marilyn Monroe as Chairman Mao, as requested by Salvador Dalí during his guest editorship of the French edition of Vogue magazine (December 1971 – January 1972).

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Alfred Hitchcock for the promotion of the film ‘The Birds’
1962
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Cover of Life magazine with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe jumping by Philippe Halsman, November 9, 1959
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Mises en scène

Halsman was often commissioned to photograph the contemporary art scene for magazines including dance, cinema and theatre. Collaborations with artists were important in Halsman’s career and inspired performances resulting in picture stories or striking individual images.

Focus on ‘Jumpology’

In 1950, Halsman invented ‘jumpology’, a new way of creating spontaneous, authentic portraits: “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears”. Over a period of ten years, Halsman created an extraordinary gallery of portraits of American society.

Containing over 170 portraits, Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book illustrated a new “psychological portrait” approach developed by Philippe Halsman in the 1950s. His method was systematic. During commissioned work, at the end of shooting sessions Halsman would ask his subjects if they would agree to take part in his personal project, and then the jumps were done on the spot. In this way he managed to photograph hundreds of jumps. Producing these shots was in fact simple: his equipment was limited to a Rolleiflex camera and an electronic flash, and as he pointed out, the only constraint was the height of the ceiling.

Although these portraits are characterised by their lightheartedness, Halsman viewed ‘jumpology’ as a new scientific tool for psychology. While the subject was concentrating on his jump, “the mask” fell, and it was this moment that the photographer needed to capture. Over the time that he was conducting this experiment, Halsman noticed the great diversity of the various participants’ postures, and discerned in these gestures – leg positions, arm positions, facial expressions and other details revealing signs of their character, expressed unwillingly.

The arrangement of the portraits in Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book illustrated these views. Halsman made a distinction in the form of two corpuses. First he presented influential personalities from different fields (political, industrial, scientific, theological, literary, etc…) resulting in a gallery of unexpected portraits that contrasted with their official image. For this project, Halsman also enjoyed the collaboration of actors, singers, dancers, etc… Conscious of the special character of their performances, Halsman assembled their images in a second part, categorised by discipline. This organisation was punctuated by various themes like American flamboyance, British reserve, and the eloquence of actresses’ legwork. The layout played with different photograph formats and assemblages.

Although it only presented well-known personalities, the publication nevertheless encouraged the democratisation of this practice: it ended with a photograph of Philippe Halsman jumping on a beach, with a caption asking: “How do you jump?”

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Nu au pop-corn (Popcorn nude)
1949
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Dalí Atomicus
1948
Contact sheet
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos
Exclusive rights for images of Salvador Dalí: Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2014

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Dalí Atomicus
1948
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos
Exclusive rights for images of Salvador Dalí: Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2014

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Épreuve préparatoire pour “Certainement. Je m’adonne personnellement à des explosions atomiques,” Dalí’s Mustache
(Test event for “Certainly. I personally engaged in atomic explosions,” Dalí’s Mustache)
1953-1954
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Portrait de Salvador Dalí avec casque de footballeur américain (Portrait of Salvador Dalí with American football helmet)
1964
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Dalí Cyclops
1949
Musée de l’Elysée
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos

“In the thirty years of our friendship I have made countless photographs showing the surrealist painter in the most incredible situations. Whenever I needed a striking or famous protagonist for one of my wild ideas, Dalí would graciously oblige. Whenever Dalí thought of a photograph so strange that it seemed impossible to produce, I tried to find a solution. ‘Can you make me look like Mona Lisa?… Can you make a man one half of whom would look like Dalí and the other half like Picasso?’ I could and I did.”

Philippe Halsman

Halsman/Dalí

One of Halsman’s favourite subjects was Salvador Dalí with whom he shared a unique collaboration that spanned 37 years. Their 47 sittings, combining Dalí’s talent for performance and Halsman’s technical skill and inventiveness, resulting in an impressive repertoire of “photographic ideas”.

Focus on Dalí’s Mustache

As Halsman explains, Dalí’s Mustache is the fruit of this marriage of the minds. They conceived this book entirely dedicated to Dalí’s moustache, and created over thirty portraits of the painter absurdly answering Halsman’s questions. In 1953 Halsman realised that Salvador Dalí’s expanding moustache gave him the “chance to fulfil one his most ambitious dreams yet and create an extraordinarily eccentric work”. Dalí was enormously fond of his own person and of his mustache in particular, which he saw as a symbol of the power of his imagination, and was immediately thrilled at the idea. To create a “picture book” containing an interview with Salvador Dalí, Halsman reused an editorial concept he had introduced five years earlier with French actor Fernandel: a question asked of the artist was printed on one page, and the answer appeared on the following page in the form of a captioned photograph.

For this project, it was no longer just a matter of photographic expression, but of genuine mise en scène, combining Dalí’s theatrical character with Halsman’s impressive inventiveness and technical skill. Halsman presented the book as a genuine collaboration between two artists, representing their mutual understanding.

Halsman photographed Dalí with his 4×5 camera and his electronic flash through many sessions over a period of two years. Most of the plates in the book are portraits of the artist posing in a variety of positions, playing with his moustache in various ways, accentuated by light and framing effects. Dalí was ready to go along with any whim to create the scenes: he styles his precious moustache with the help of Hungarian wax, and agrees to take part in incongruous mises en scène, pressing his head behind a round of cheese to put the ends of his moustache through its holes, or plunging his head into a water-filled aquarium, his mouth full of milk.

As for Halsman, he put a lot of his effort into the post-production work in order to give concrete expression to their ideas. It sometimes took a laborious process to achieve images like the Mona Lisa portrait, inner conflicts, surrealism or the essence of Dalí, which not only required work on the print or negative (cutting, enlargement, deformation, double exposure) but also a montage and a new shot to create a negative of the final image. For the portrait of the artist in the form of a “soft watch”, Halsman worked around one hundred hours. He photographed Dali close up, then tacked a wet print of the image onto the edge of a table and re-photographed it at an angle that matched the angle of the original painting. He then cut it out, made a collage, and re-photographed it again – creating an image of Dali’s melted face. For the photographer, it was a genuine technical challenge, which he seized with patience and success.

Philippe Halsman (American, 1906-1979)
Like Two Erect Sentries, My Mustache Defends the Entrance to My Real Self, Dalí’s Mustache
1954
Philippe Halsman Archive
© 2013 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos
Exclusive rights for images of Salvador Dalí: Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2014

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Review / Text: ‘Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th October, 2013 – 2nd March, 2014

Curators: Susan Van Wyk, Senior Curator of Photography at the NGV, and Paola Di Trocchio, Assistant Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the NGV

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) 'Model Dinarzade in a Dress by Poiret' 1924 from the exhibition 'Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion' at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, October 2013 - March 2014

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Model Dinarzade in a Dress by Poiret
1924
Gelatin silver photograph

Image used under fair use for the purpose of art criticism

This is a sublime exhibition, teaming with fabulous frocks and beautiful, classical, evanescent photographs. The exhibition was in my top nine magnificent Melbourne exhibitions that featured on Art Blart last year. Elegant, sophisticated and oozing quality, this exhibition has been a sure fire winner for the NGV. This review will concentrate on the photographs by Edward Steichen. See my previous posting on the exhibition including installation photographs.

High Society

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was a painter and champion of art photography who initially worked in the soft focus, Pictorialist style prevalent at the beginning of the 20th century. He was an artist who worked closely with Alfred Stieglitz on the influential quarterly art journal Camera Work, designing the cover and the Art Nouveau-style typeface especially for the internationally focused publication. Stieglitz, and by extension Camera Work, lived to promote photography as an art form and to challenge the norms of how art may be defined.1 In the early years Camera Work only published photography, but in later years the journal increasingly featured reproductions of and articles on modern painting, drawing and aesthetics.

“This change was brought about by a similar transformation at Stieglitz’s New York gallery, which had been known as the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession until 1908. That year he changed the name of the gallery to “291”, and he began showing avant-garde modern artists such as Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse along with photographers. The positive responses he received at the gallery encouraged Stieglitz to broaden the scope of Camera Work as well, although he decided against any name change for the journal.”2

Steichen was heavily associated with Gallery 291 (291 Fifth Avenue, New York City) which ran from 1905 to 1917. The gallery exhibited European artists such as Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Brancussi, Cézanne and Rodin and soon to be famous American artists such as John Marin, Max Weber, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe. Virtually no other gallery in the United States was showing modern art works with such abstract and dynamic content at this time.3 Both the gallery and the journal ran hand in hand; both closed in 1917. The journal closed due to a downturn in interest in Pictorial photography, a lack of subscribers, cultural changes and the economic effects of the First World War, which saw both the costs and even the availability of the paper on which it was printed become challenging.4 In the penultimate issue 48 (October 1916) Stieglitz,

” …introduced the work of a young photographer, Paul Strand, whose photographic vision was indicative of the aesthetic changes now at the heart of Camera Work’s demise. Strand shunned the soft focus and symbolic content of the Pictorialists and instead strived to create a new vision that found beauty in the clear lines and forms of ordinary objects. By publishing Strand’s work Stieglitz was hastening the end of the aesthetic vision he had championed for so long. Nine months later, in June 1917, what was to be the final issue of Camera Work appeared. It was devoted almost entirely to Strand’s photographs.”5

Edward Steichen felt the change in the air. When he accepted the job as chief photographer for Condé Nast publications in 1923 his early fashion photographs for Vogue and Vanity Fair were seen as innovative and ground breaking, even as his former art colleagues saw shooting fashion and celebrities was a way of selling-out. Steichen bought to fashion and portrait photography an aesthetic of clear lines and forms that simply had not been present before, coupled with a Pictorialist sensibility for light and the use of low depth of field. John McDonald in his excellent review of the exhibition observes, “Steichen has claims to having invented fashion photography with a series of pictures he took in Paris in 1911, for couturier, Paul Poiret; but the genre had found its first true professional in Baron Adolphe de Meyer, who left Vogue for Harper’s Bazaar, opening the door for Steichen’s appointment. De Meyer was an incurable mannerist who remained true to the Pictorialist aesthetic, but his successor would prove himself an innovator.”6

Steichen’s photographs from 1923-1924 are pared back, Modernist photographs that evidence the beginning of his later photographic style. Madame Nadine Vera wearing a crêpe evening gown by Chanel (1924) has a plain background of some wooden studio panels; Model Dinarzade in a Dress by Poiret (1924, above) has fabric hanging behind while Crêpe de chine dress by Lanvin (1924) has three doors casually put together to form the backdrop to the model. All three photographs show beautiful tonality and lighting in the full length capture of the models with hints of browns and yellows in the prints. The figure is isolated in the studio space simply and elegantly. The model is being studied. Steichen’s models are immersed in suffused light but the form of the photograph is different from that of Pictorialism, for the models themselves are pin sharp, as though stepping out into the world. These early photographs are fascinating to study, for they lay the ground work for what is to follow. These three images inform the viewer as to the experimentation that Steichen was undertaking to get to a starting point for the complex and atmospheric studio lighting that he would later employ.

Gradually, Steichen’s images become more confident and assured and take on a patina of beauty, style and grace. In his close-up portraits there is an isolation of the face against out of focus backgrounds with the use of profiles, arms and elbows as framing devices, for example Actress Sylvia Sidney (1929) and Actress Clara Bow (1928, above). In his longer-length portraits there is an isolation of figures against a white or black ground, as in Marion Morehouse in a dress by Louise Boulanger (1929) and Actresses Norma and Constance Talmadge (1927). Males usually have a heavy darkness to them while the females are more luminously lit. In the male portraits the hands dominate. The hands in the male photographs belong to the male as part of the portrait whereas in the early photographs of women they are only models, there at his command, and the hands are almost invisible. Only in the later photographs of high society women are the hands of females fully represented. What can be observed is that the figure is usually isolated against an out of focus background, with deep, dark shadows and soft luxurious light, low depth of field and feminine profiles.

In commercial terms (and we must remember that this is how the artist made his living for these photographs were seen as his commercial work at the time), Steichen’s photographs fulfilled his brief: the portrayal of shimmer and sparkle, geometric Art Deco style, the drama and theatrical lighting of the talkies, and the spectacle of the liberated modern women. She in turn was influenced by the prevalent cultural conditions: smoking, jazz, prohibition, automobiles, trains, dancing, fast living, gold (King Tuts tomb was discovered in 1922) and African and Japanese art. Appealing to the new leisure classes, publications such as Vogue and Vanity Fair offered a glimpse of a longed for paradise to the burgeoning middle-classes with their photographs of the rich and famous, the glamour and the costumes – the social groups that hold the most power actually exposing their own status on paper through these magazines.

As John McDonald notes, “Steichen uses every trick at his disposal to convey a particular kind of image,”7 an image that uses increasingly elaborate studio lighting and disparate indoor and outdoor locations. But by the early 1930s the work becomes quite formulaic with its use of low depth of field, profiles, angles of arms or chairs and geometric shapes. The figure is tightly controlled – either cropped close in or set amongst ambiguously filled sets and shaped backgrounds. There is a sameness and repetitiveness about the work as one image bleeds into another. In fact, after that early period of experimentation, there is basically no change to his mature style from the years 1925-1937 and this makes for a long twelve years for an artist of his talent. He found his mother load and he stuck to it.

Steichen’s photographs of the rich and famous are “pictures” taken by one who mingled with the elite, one who enjoyed the trappings of fame and high society. As Robert Nelson notes in his review of the exhibition, “Steichen’s talents were never incompatible with the conspicuous snobbery of his age, for which it would never have occurred to him to proffer an apology. Having arrived himself, he naturally admires gentry-by-ambition and crowns it with the smugness that it enjoys.”8 Ouch! Nelson goes on to observe, “Much of the work is statuesque and formidable in its composition, lighting and symbolic rigour,” while at the same time portraying a world that is completely artificial in which nothing is real and everything is a pose.9 And we, the viewer and reader, are voyeurs of this hedonistic world.

On close reading, the photographs flatten out into a studied set of stylistic manoeuvres, a form where style stands in for a quality of visual perception.10 As Steichen seeks to “clinch the image” the syntax of his photographs (the system of organisation used in putting lines together to form pictures) becomes imitative. This leads to evanescent photographs, images that soon pass out of sight, memory, or existence; images that slip for the mind as quickly as one sees them. There is little sense of dislocation in the images, only “in his ability to distance himself from a subject, analysing his or her foibles with a cool, practiced eye,”11 and in the distance of the scene from the reality of everyday life. Each photograph becomes a microcosm of vanity, celebrity and fashion. Steichen ticks all the boxes (and he made all the boxes that he ticked) but the photographs usually don’t fulfil any new demands that the situation generates. He restricts his field of view to one that he creates and controls within certain narrowly defined boundaries, usually using passive people who are at his command. In his orientation to the world the photographs are not ‘things as they are’ but things as they are constructed to be (seen) – a form of social capital, social fascism, even.12

Only when Steichen is challenged by an active “personality” does he raise his game. This is when the modernist, emotive, visually rhapsodic AND MEMORABLE photographs take hold in this exhibition.

The great breakthrough with Greta Garbo (1929, below), mass of black with face surmounting, hair pulled back by hands “the woman came out full beauty on her magnificent face” Steichen said; Actress Gloria Swanson (1924, below) like some prowling, wide-eyed animal hidden behind a black lace veil, “a predatory femme fatale concealing her ambitions behind a mask of beauty”13; Marlene Dietrich (1934, below) nestled into the glorious curve of an armchair, lace-covered hand open, inviting; and Actress Loretta Young (1931) active, not passive, in which Steichen humanises his sitter. For me, these are the glorious images – not the men, not the fashion photographs, but these strong, independent women.

“An interested image-maker takes available resources for meaning (visual grammars, fabrication techniques and focal points of attention), undertakes an act of designing (the process of image-making), and in so doing re-images the world in a way that it has never quite been seen before.”14 Initially, in the early experimentation, this is what Steichen did; he achieves it again in the photographs of Garbo, Swanson, Dietrich and Young.

As for the other photographs we feel an overall suffused glow of beauty and glamour – we admire their scale and intensity, the deep blacks and velvety whites, and wonder at the light and assemblage of elements – but they do not have the power and engagement of the best, most challenging work. In these photographs of vibrant women the viewer finally starts to feel the spirit of the face, the spirit of the person captured in an instant. And that is a rare and beautiful thing.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,883

Footnotes

1/ Whelan, Richard. Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography. NY: Little, Brown, 1995, pp. 189-223
2/ Anon. “Camera Work,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014
3/ Anon. “291,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014
4/ “Camera Work,” op. cit.,
5/ Hoffman, Katherine. Stieglitz : A Beginning Light. New Haven: Yale University Press Studio, 2004, pp. 213–222 cited in “Camera Work,” op. cit.,
6/ McDonald, John. “Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion” on John McDonald website February 1, 2014 [Online] Cited 15/02/2014
7/ Ibid.,
8/ Nelson, Robert. “An age of elegance captured forever,” in The Age newspaper Wednesday November 6th, 2013, p. 54
9/ Ibid.,
10/ Rewording of a sentence by Sleigh, Tom. “Too Much of the Air: Tomas Tranströmer,” 2005, on the Poets.org website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014. No longer available online
11/ McDonald, op. cit.,
12/ “In sociology, social capital is the expected collective or economic benefits derived from the preferential treatment and cooperation between individuals and groups. Although different social sciences emphasise different aspects of social capital, they tend to share the core idea “that social networks have value”.”
Anon. “Social capital,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014
“Social fascism was a theory supported by the Communist International (Comintern) during the early 1930s, which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model, it stood in the way of a complete and final transition to communism.”
Anon. “Social fascism,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014
13/ McDonald, op. cit.,
14/ Anon. “The Image of Transformation: Properties of Consequence,” on The Image website [Online] Cited 15/02/2014. No longer available online

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Actress Clara Bow for Vanity Fair
1928
Vintage silver gelatin print
Block Museum, Gift of the Hollander Family in Honor of Morton and Mimi Schapiro
Steichen / Condé Nast Archive; © Condé Nast

Image used under fair use for the purpose of art criticism

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) Actress 'Gloria Swanson' 1924

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Actress Gloria Swanson
1924
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Steichen’s portrait of Gloria Swanson has taken on iconic masterpiece status overtime. Created in 1924, just as the first feature-length sound movies were emerging – effectively truncating the actress’s brilliant silent-film career – this image caught the essential Gloria Swanson: haunting and inscrutable, forever veiled in the whisper of a distant era. Steichen’s photograph has elements of turn-of-the-century Pictorialism (moody and delicate, the subject seeming to peer from the darkness, as if from jungle foliage), yet it also projects modernist boldness, with its pin-sharp precision and graphic severity.

Anonymous. “Gloria Swanson by Edward Steichen,” on the Iconic Photos website October 5th, 2009 [Online] Cited 11/02/2021. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Dancers Leonore Hughes and Maurice Mouvet' 1924

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Dancers Leonore Hughes and Maurice Mouvet
1924
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Maurice Mouvet was one of the most famous and successful dance teams around the early 1910’s and lead the way for many performers that would follow… Maurice was born in New York but as a young lad moved to Paris with his father and knew he wanted to be a dancer as a young boy. He had his first professional dance at the Noveau Cirque in Paris, France at age 15. Mouvet’s best partners were Florence Walton and Leonora (Leona) Hughes.

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Actress Paula Negri' 1925

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Actress Paula Negri
1925
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Pola Negri (Polish, 1897-1987)

Pola Negri (née Apolonia Chałupiec, January 3, 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and become one of the most popular actresses in American silent film. She also started several important women’s fashion trends that are still staples of the women’s fashion industry. Her varied career included work as an actress in theatre and vaudeville; as a singer and recording artist; as an author; and as a ballerina.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Tamaris with a large Art Deco scarf' 1925

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Tamaris with a large Art Deco scarf
1925
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Model wearing a black tulle headdress by Suzanne Talbot and a brocade coat with black fox collar' 1925

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Model wearing a black tulle headdress by Suzanne Talbot and a brocade coat with black fox collar
1925
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Actor Gary Cooper' 1930

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Actor Gary Cooper
1930
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Marion Morehouse and unidentified model wearing dresses by Vionnet' 1930

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Marion Morehouse and unidentified model wearing dresses by Vionnet
1930
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Marion Morehouse (American, 1906-1969)

Marion Morehouse (1906-1969), was a fashion model who rose to prominence in the late 20s and early 30s, sitting for Vanity Fair and Vogue photographer Edward Steichen. The pair created some strikingly modernist photographs. According to Steichen Morehouse was:

“The greatest fashion model I ever photographed … When she put on the clothes that were to be photographed, she transformed herself into a woman who really would wear that gown … whatever the outfit was.”

She was also a favourite of Cecil Beaton and French Vogue’s Baron George Hoyningen-Huene. Morehouse was of Choctaw Indian ancestry, with brown eyes and an angular frame. After her modelling career ended, she took up photography herself. Later she became the third wife of author and painter E.E Cummings. When Cummings met Marion Morehouse in 1932, he was in the middle of a painful split from his second wife, Anne Barton. Although it is not clear whether the two were ever formally married, Morehouse lived with Cummings in a common-law marriage until his death in 1962. Morehouse died on May 18, 1969.

Text from the Photographs, film, literature & quotes from the bygone era website [Online] Cited 10/02/2014. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Olympic diver Katherine Rawls' 1931

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Olympic diver Katherine Rawls
1931
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Katherine Louise Rawls (June 14, 1917 – April 8, 1982) was a multiple United States national champion in swimming and diving in the 1930s.

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) Model 'Dorothy Smart wearing a black velvet hat by Madame Agnès' 1926

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Model Dorothy Smart wearing a black velvet hat by Madame Agnès
1926
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

France’s most popular milliner Madame Agnes was born in France in the late 1800’s, she retired in 1949, and died a short while later. She was famous for cutting the brims of her hats while they were worn by her customers. Madame Agnes styled hats which were both abstract and unique. An illustration from 1927 depicts Madame Agnes’ Congo inspired hats with a model wearing a slave collar. As the 20’s moved into the 30’s, the hats became smaller and away from the face. In December 1935 she introduced hats with large straw brims which were mounted on flowered madras handkerchiefs. Madame Agnes was inspired by a matador’s hat when she created a small dinner hat for Spring 1936. It was sewn of black maline with heavy white silk fringe. The fringe was mounted on each side of the hat’s top. In mid-1946 she created a soft beige beret of felt which featured a line that was broken just above the right eyebrow, where a soft quill was inserted.

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'On George Baher's yacht' 1928

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
On George Baher’s yacht. June Cox wearing unidentified fashion; E. Vogt wearing fashion by Chanel and a hat by Reboux; Lee Miller wearing a dress by Mae and Hattie Green and a scarf by Chanel; Hanna-Lee Sherman wearing unidentified fashion
1928
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977) was an American photographer. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907, she was a successful fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became an established fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Marlene Dietrich' 1934

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Marlene Dietrich
1934
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Greta Garbo' 1929

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Greta Garbo
1929
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) Actress 'Joan Crawford in a dress by Schiaparelli' 1932

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Actress Joan Crawford in a dress by Schiaparelli
1932
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Elsa Schiaparelli (Italian, 1890-1973)

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was an Italian fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the two World Wars. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli’s designs were heavily influenced by Surrealists like her collaborators Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti. Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes and actress Mae West.

Perhaps Schiaparelli’s most important legacy was in bringing to fashion the playfulness and sense of “anything goes” of the Dada and Surrealist movements. She loved to play with juxtapositions of colours, shapes and textures, and embraced the new technologies and materials of the time. With Charles Colcombet she experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called “Jersela” and a rayon with metal threads called “Fildifer” – the first time synthetic materials were used in couture. Some of these innovations were not pursued further, like her 1934 “glass” cape made from Rhodophane, a transparent plastic related to cellophane. But there were more lasting innovations; Schiaparelli created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake’s pleats and crinkles. In 1930 alone she created the first evening-dress with a jacket, and the first clothes with visible zippers. In fact fastenings were something of a speciality, from a jacket buttoned with silver tambourines to one with silk-covered carrots and cauliflowers. Schiaparelli did not adapt to the changes in fashion following World War II and her business closed in 1954.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'White (center Gwili André)' 1935

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
White (center Gwili André)
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

Gwili Andre (Danish, 1908-1959)

Gwili Andre (4 February 1908 – 5 February 1959) was a Danish actress who had a brief career in Hollywood films. Andre came to Hollywood in the early 1930s with the intention of establishing herself as a film star. She appeared in the 1932 RKO Studio films Roar of the Dragon and Secrets of the French Police and began to attract attention for her striking good looks. These films provided her with starring roles playing against such established actors as Richard Dix, ZaSu Pitts and Frank Morgan, and RKO began using her glamorous looks to promote her.

A widespread publicity campaign ensured that her name and face became well known to the American public, but her next role in No Other Woman (1933), opposite Irene Dunne, was not the success the studio expected. Over the next few years she was relegated to supporting roles which included the Joan Crawford picture A Woman’s Face (1941). Her final role was a minor part in one of the popular Falcon series, The Falcon’s Brother in 1942.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Actress Mary Heberden' 1935

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Actress Mary Heberden
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

American actress Mary Heberden made her first New York stage appearance in 1925 and performed regularly on Broadway in the 1930s.

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23) 'Charlie Chaplin' 1934

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-1923)
Charlie Chaplin
1934
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

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Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2025 – 3rd May, 2026

Image-Makers: Women in Photography

Sybille Binder (Austrian, 1895-1962)

Career

New Women, New Visions

At Play: The Studio, Light and Shadows

Cities, Industries, Technologies

Exhibition dates: 5th June – 10th October, 2021

New Photography and the Swiss Werkbund

Photobooks

Photo|graphic design

“Pro Telephon” and first films

The World Exhibition of Photography in Lucerne

Masterpieces

Films for Walt Disney

360 degree cinema

The forgotten Swiss Oscars

The 360 pioneer

Heiniger’s death

Books

Filmography

Exhibition dates: 20th November 2019 – 15th March 2020

Izis (Israel Bidermanas) (Lithuanian-Jewish, 1911-1980)

Exhibition dates: 12th July, 2019 – 13th October, 2019

Museum Folkwang Essen exhibition dates: 9th December, 2016 – 19th February, 2017C/O Berlin exhibition dates: 10th December, 2016 – 12th February, 2017

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The beginnings / How it began. Part 1

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The Americans. Part 2

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Essen. Part 3

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Michael Schmidt. Part 4

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Hanover. Part 5

Exhibition dates: 3rd June – 21st September, 2014

Beginnings: Budapest, Berlin And Paris

Spain And The Civil War

Mexico

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th September, 2014

Knud Lonberg-Holm: The Invisible Architect

Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten

Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th September 2014

Exhibition dates: 29th January – 11th May, 2014

Presentation of the exhibition

Paris in the 1930s

Focus on La Pléiade gallery

Portraits

Focus on Marilyn Monroe

Mises en scène

Focus on ‘Jumpology’

Halsman/Dalí

Focus on Dalí’s Mustache

Exhibition dates: 18th October, 2013 – 2nd March, 2014

High Society

Footnotes

Pola Negri (Polish, 1897-1987)

Marion Morehouse (American, 1906-1969)

Elsa Schiaparelli (Italian, 1890-1973)

Gwili Andre (Danish, 1908-1959)

Museum Folkwang Essen exhibition dates: 9th December, 2016 – 19th February, 2017
C/O Berlin exhibition dates: 10th December, 2016 – 12th February, 2017