photo: © Art Collection of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin | Fat Lady (Lake Michigan, United States), 1938
Through nearly 50 remarkable photographs, this book takes readers and viewers on a journey through the photographic work of Ellen Auerbach (Karlsruhe, 1906 – New York, 2004). It follows Auerbach to the places of her exile and on her travels through Latin America and Western Europe.
Ellen Auerbach’s career as a photographer began in Berlin, where she studied under Bauhaus photographer Walter Peterhans. Germany soon became too dangerous for the Jewish Ellen Auerbach, then known as Ellen Rosenberg.
Shortly after the National Socialists seized power in 1933, she and her future husband, Walter Auerbach, first emigrated to Palestine, where she opened a children’s photography studio, and later to England. She was unable to establish a steady career as a photographer there either. She eventually emigrated to the United States and lived in New York until her death in 2004 at age 98.
Auerbach belonged to the group of women who discovered photography’s creative potential and made a name for themselves through this young medium.
Ellen Auerbach described herself as a citizen of the world who felt at home everywhere. Her photographs also consistently reflect a personal search for meaning. Her subjects range from advertising photography, landscapes, and portraits to street photography.
She approached people in foreign places with curiosity and empathy through her camera. She was never intrusive or romanticizing, yet she did not take an explicitly socially critical position either.
Her distinctive photographic eye emerges in avant-garde experiments, comic situations, and surprising details. Auerbach’s work is part of the art collection of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Eminent German photographer Barbara Klemm rediscovered her body of work and played a major role in bringing Auerbach’s photographs the international attention they deserve today.
“... Through terrible experiences, good people grow stronger.” — (autobiographical note by Ellen Auerbach, 2004)
Ellen Auerbach: Berlin – Tel Aviv – New York- Andreas von Maltzan
Pages: 48
Price: € 9.95. Language: Dutch. This article refers to the Dutch-language edition.
Publisher: Uitgeverij Waanders & de Kunst
ISBN: 9789462620698
