photo: Maria Austria - AmaVirikiti: Scenes from Ama Virikiti by Robert Serumaga, performed by Uganda’s Theatre Unlimited from Kampala at the Mickery Theater (1974)
Photographer Maria Austria died almost half a century ago. She was born into a Jewish family in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, in 1915.
Between 1933 and 1936, Maria Austria studied photography at Vienna’s Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt. Like many other Jewish people, she was eventually forced to seek refuge. She went to Amsterdam, where her sister Lisbeth already lived and worked.
The war changed the photographer’s life drastically and permanently. “I will not go behind barbed wire voluntarily,” she declared. “They will have to come and get me.”
Once in hiding, she forged identity cards and served as a courier. Her mother, her brother and his wife did not survive the war; her sister and her brother's three young daughters did survive.
Immediately after the war, the thirty-year-old photographer resumed her work with determination and enthusiasm. She continued until her death from physical exhaustion in January 1975.
Maria Austria – Photobiography sheds new light on the life and work of this remarkable photographer. Her photographs reflect the social, political and cultural development of the Netherlands and Europe. She documented both postwar reconstruction and early attempts to process the trauma of war through music, art and theater. She was close to the action. Her portraits and her images of the performing arts are unparalleled.
This photobiography places her in historical context. She was a professional who built her career independently and shaped her work with great personal commitment and a convincing, distinctive vision.
Maria Austria Photobiography - Martien Frijns
Pages: 816
Price: €50.00
Publisher: M10Boeken. Language: Dutch. This article refers to the Dutch-language edition.
