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Lotte Jacobi

• In October 1935 the German émigré photographer Lotte Jacobi, together with her sister Ruth Jacobi, opened a photo studio on 57th Street. The two sisters had to leave their parents' photo studio in Berlin in the 1930s and emigrated to New York.
• Given name
  Lotte
• Last name
  Jacobi
• Alternative names

  Johanna Alexandra Jacobi

• Date of Birth
  17-08-1896
• Place of Birth
  Toruń (PL)
• Date of Death
  06-05-1990
• Place of Death
  Concord (US)
• Profession
  Photographer
• Introduction

  In October 1935 the German émigré photographer Lotte Jacobi, together with her sister Ruth Jacobi, opened a photo studio on 57th Street. The two sisters had to leave their parents' photo studio in Berlin in the 1930s and emigrated to New York.

  Word Count: 41

• Signature Image

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Self-portrait, New York, 1937 (© 2020. University of New Hampshire).

• Content

  Born in Poland in 1896, Lotte Jacobi arrived in New York from London via Southampton after a three-week stay in the UK capital during which she captured her first exile station in several images. As she arrived in New York with only a visitor visa, she required the assistance of her sister, the photographer Ruth Jacobi, who was already settled in New York, in order to open her own studio. From 30 October, 1935 until October, 1936, the two sisters ran a photo studio on 1393 Sixt Avenue at 57th Street. This area, close to Central Park, between 6th and Park Avenues, stretching from West 59th Street to West 54th Street, hosted a number of galleries, including the Norlyst Gallery, Julien Levy Gallery, Art of This Century, St. Etienne Gallery and Gallery Matisse, as well photo agencies such as Camera Features. During her years in New York, Lotte Jacobi moved around the city, but never quite made it to Midtown Manhattan. Other emigrated photographers such as Ylla, Gerda Peterich, Lotte's sister Ruth Jacobi as well as Trude Fleischmann, Josef Breitenbach and Erwin Blumenfeld all had studio-apartments in Midtown Manhattan.

  When Lotte Jacobi arrived in New York in 1935, she had a selection of her best portrait and dance photographs of artists and intellectuals in Berlin in her luggage. These reflected her interest in photographic experiments and her adoption of the artistic and modern photographic language of the “New Vision”, none of which was yet in demand in New York. Nevertheless, she was committed to building a photographic business in New York and to finding an outlet for her personal photographic language and understanding in the realms of portrait and dance photography. Jacobi had developed her technical skills and knowledge during her studies in Berlin and at the “Höhere Fachschule für Phototechnik in München“ as well as in her parents' photo studio in Berlin, which at the time was a well-established address for portraits and enhanced her reputation as a photographer. On 29 December, 1935, eight portraits of Berlin celebrities, artistes and intellectuals were published in a one-pager in the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. All photos were credited to Studio Jacobi, so perhaps some were by her sister Ruth. Before the expiration of her visitor visa, Lotte Jacobi procured an affidavit from her uncle who had a clothing store on Broadway. This allowed her to re-enter the U.S. via the Canadian border in January, 1936. Her mother Mia Jacobi (1872–1950) and her son Joachim Jacobi (1917–1985; who Americanised his name into John Hunter) also arrived in New York the same year. As Lotte Jacobi was divorced since 1921 from Siegbert Fritz Honig, her mother and son came without him. In September, 1936, she finally opened her own studio at 24 West 59th Street, Central Park South.

  The huge collection of portrait photographs in the archive shows how well she managed to establish herself in the photo business in New York. She was also able to meet up with other emigrated photographers whom she had known as a student in Munich (Bayerische Lehranstalt für Lichtbildwesen) and Berlin. Among these was Ernst Fuhrmann, whose portrait she took in 1942. She also made contact with Albert Einstein and his wife Elise, whom she had known in Europe. More than 50 portraits of Einstein and his family exist, taken by Jacobi in Caputh (1928) and later in Huntington (1937) and Princeton (1938). In the constant private correspondence during these years between Lotte Jacobi and Elsa Einstein, is one of the first letters exchanged by the two women after their arrival in the U.S. In it, Elsa Einstein writes about how much she appreciates the images taken in Caputh and Berlin, referring to interior portraits and photos of her children. She suggests that Jacobi come to her new residence in Princeton to take some photographs of the relocated furniture that appeared in the Berlin images: “… und dann sollen Sie wieder hübsche Aufnahmen machen, vielleicht auch Innen-Aufnahmen. Ganz dieselben Möbel und viele der lieben Dinge, die dort waren und die Sie in einem Berliner Mietshaus aufgenommen haben. Jetzt haben sie ein ganz anderes Gesicht bekommen und stehen in einem anderen amerikanischen Hause im Colonial Stil, in winzigen niedrigen Zimmerchen und sie nehmen sich sehr sonderbar darin aus.” (Elsa Einstein to Lotte Jacobi, 23.10.1935, Lotte Jacobi Papers 6:25) A portrait of Albert Einstein in the Princeton living room in 1938 probably shows the relocated furniture.
  Besides Einstein, Lotte Jacobi made portraits of many emigrated artists and intellectuals, such as Ernst Bloch, Marc Chagall and daughter Ida, Oskar Maria Graf and Leo Katz, as well as members of America’s high society like Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. As she had during her travels in South Asia and Uzbekistan during the 1930s, Lotte Jacobi discovered the pleasure of the outdoors in her urban life. Her images of Central Park and her overviews of New York reveal her interest in the artistic aesthetics and forms of the city, photographing in different lights and time conditions and focusing on cut-offs, unusual perspectives and shadow plays. Besides architecture and street scenes, animals were also a motif in her pictures, as they had been in Berlin. She was also able to gain entry to the New York Stock Exchange and produced a series of photographs of this normally hidden workplace. Her picture of a deserted stock exchange littered with paper was printed in the New York Herald Tribune.  

  Her masterful photographic technique and the way she played with light and shadow can also be seen in the portraits she made of émigré artist Hanya Holm during a dance practice with other dancers. Photographing from different angles, Jacobi went with the flow of the dancers while capturing their gaze and movements. To emphasise the dancers' expressive movements, she cleverly played with light and shadow. Holm was a former student of Mary Wigman and one of the founders of the German Ausdruckstanz. From 1931, Holm directed the Mary Wigram dance school in New York (later renamed the Hanya Holm dance school). Lotte Jacobi had already established her revolutionary portraits of dancers in motion in Berlin in the 1920s, for example with her portrait of Claire Bauroff and Harald Kreutzberg and her pictures of the expressionistic-grotesque performances of Valeska Gert (she also emigrated to New York and opened a cabaret and bar Beggar Bar). The new network of the New York modern dance scene was also reflected in the portraits of Pauline Koner. The close relationships and networks shared by émigré photographers and dancers in New York and the importance of photography in exile can also be seen in the images of the emigrated photographer Gerda Peterich.

  No evidence exists that Lotte Jacobi worked for photo agencies as Black Star, PIX or Rapho Guillumete. But letters reveal that she and her husband Erich Riess were friends of Kurt Safranzki, one of the founders of Black Star and that she had commission work for the publication house Schocken Book Inc.. Lotte Jacobi was well networked in the New York photographic scene as the many correspondence to photographers as Barbara Morgan, Tim Gidal, Ernst Fuhrmann or also Stefan Lorant show. In 1938 she gave a lecture on Berenice Abbot at the Photo League and her 1936 portrait of Alfred Stieglitz at An American Place shows that she was in contact with American colleagues. From the 1940s, there are also portraits of the émigré photographers Ruth Bernhard and Werner Wolff.

  From the late 1930s, Lotte Jacobi was able to share her photographs with the public through small one-woman shows held in her own studio and at the Norlyst Gallery, as well as through participation in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1937, Lotte Jacobi held her first exhibition, Landscapes, Portraits and Studies, in her studio and showed five portraits from her Berlin days at the Brooklyn Museum's The Art of the Dance in Photography exhibition. In 1942, she was included in the Museum of Modern Art's 20th Century Portraits exhibition, which featured both photographic and painted portraits. Jacobi’s portrait of Albert Einstein was one of those shown. Her émigré colleague Hermann Landshoff also showed two portraits (Max Ernst, 1942 / Leonora Carrington, 1942)
  Participation in exhibitions at the MoMa followed in the 1940s and 1950s: Portraits (1943), In and Out of Focus: A Survey of Today’s Photography (1948), Photographs by 51 Photographers (1950), Abstraction in Photography (1951), Christmas Photographs (1951), Then and Now (1952), as well as Photographs from the Museum Collection (1959).

  Jacobi's 1948 exhibition at the Norlyst Gallery (October, 3 until October, 10 1948) was reviewed in Aufbau magazine: “Die in der Norlyst Gallery leider nur wenige Tage sichtbar gewesene Vorführung photographischer Arbeiten von Lotte Jacobi wäre es wert, ins Museum of Modern Art zu übersiedeln. Nicht zuletzt als Porträtistin u.a. von Weizmann, Helene Thimig, Barbusse, Dreiser erweist sie einen Sonderrang. Naturstudien bestätigen ihn, die etwa das verhaltene Zittern dunkler Flut geben, aus der ein geheimnissreicher Reflex aufglüht oder die geäderte Transparents von Blattpflanzen und die Melodie der spülende Welle einfangen. Doch Frau Jacobi (die Gattin des Verlegers Erich Reiss) ist darüber hinausgelangt zu ganz un-imitativen, frei erformten Gebilden aus fliessenden Glanz und gebrochenem Widerschein, von äusserst feiner Zeichnung und Skandierung.” (Wolfradt 1948, 19) The article also referred to her Photogenics, her abstract photographic work without a camera that she began in the 1940s. Her friend, the émigré artist, photographer and sculptor Leo Katz wrote an article on her experimental photographic work. During the 1940s and 1950s several small exhibitions in her studio at 46 West 52nd Street followed. After closing her studio in 1955/56, Jacobi moved to Deering, New Hampshire, where she maintained a studio and gallery from 1963 until 1970.

  Word Count: 1587

• Media

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Central Park, New York, 1936 (© 2020. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Lotte Jacobi, New York Stock Exchange, New York, 1938 (© 2020. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Ernst Fuhrmann, New York, 1942 (© 2021. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Hanya Holm dancing with troup, 1937 (© 2020. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Flyer for Lotte Jacobi’s exhibition at the Norlyst Gallery, 1948 (© 2020. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Willi Wolfradt. "Lichtbild-Schöpfungen." Aufbau, 15 October 1948, p. 19.

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Werner Wolff, 1943, New York (© 2021. University of New Hampshire).

  

  Lotte Jacobi, Ruth Bernhard, 1945, New York (© 2021. University of New Hampshire).

• Bibliography (selected)

  Atelier Lotte Jacobi. Berlin – New York, edited by Marion Beckers and Elisabeth Moortgat, exh. cat. Das Verborgene Museum, Berlin, 1997.

  Displaced Visions. Émigré Photographers of the 20th Century, edited by Nissan N. Perez, exh. cat. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2013.

  Gilbert, George. The Illustrated Worldwide Who’s Who of Jews in Photography. G. Gilbert, 1996.

  Krohn, Claus-Dieter, editor. Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 21: Film und Fotografie. edition text + kritik, München 2003.

  Lotte Jacobi 1896–1990: Berlin – New York – Deering, edited by Ute Eskildsen, exh. cat. Fotografisches Kabinett Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2000.

  Milton, Sybil. “The Refugee Photographers, 1933–1945.” Kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Exil – Exile across Cultures, edited by Helmut F. Pfanner, Bouvier, 1986, pp. 279–293.

  Moriarty, Peter. Lotte Jacobi. Photographs. David R. Godine, 2003.

  Recollections. Ten Women of Photography, edited by Margaretta K. Mitchell, exh. cat. International Center for Photography, New York, 1979.

  Röder, Werner, et al., editors. Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933–1945 (1999). Walter de Gruyter, 2016, p. 558. Accessed 8 March 2021.

  Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. Abbeville Press, 1994.

  Schaber, Irme. “Fotografie.” Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933–1945, edited by Claus-Dieter Krohn and Patrick von zur Mühlen, WBG, 1998, pp. 970–983.

  Schaber, Irme. “‘Die Kamera ist ein Instrument der Entdeckung…’. Die Großstadtfotografie der fotografischen Emigration in der NS-Zeit in Paris, London und New York.” Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 20: Metropolen des Exils, edited by Claus-Dieter Krohn, edition text + kritik 2002, pp. 53–73.

  Unbelichtet. Münchner Fotografen im Exil, edited by Tatjana Neef, exh. cat. Jüdisches Museum München, Munich 2010.

  Werneburg, Brigitte. “LIFE: Leben in der Emigration. Deutsche Fotojournalisten in Amerika.” (unpublished manuscript, 1991), werneburg.nikha.org. Accessed 15 February 2021.

  Wolfradt, Willi. "Lichtbild-Schöpfungen. Photo Sezession." Aufbau, 15 October 1948, p. 19.

  Word Count: 261

• Archives and Sources

  Lotte Jacobi Papers, 1898–2000, MC-58, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham.

  Lotte Jacobi Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

  Project object:photo, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

  The Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women's Archive, Brookline.

  Verborgenes Museum.

  In the fall of 1979, Lotte Jacobi spoke with Margaretta K. Mitchell at the ICP in conjunction with the exhibition: Recollections: Ten Women of Photographyshowing photographs of her career.

  Word Count: 73

• Acknowledgements

  My deepest thanks go to Sherard Harrington of the University of New Hampshire for providing me with material and images by Lotte Jacobi.

  Word Count: 23

• Author
  Helene Roth
• Exile

  London, GB (1935); New York City, US (1935–1956).

• Known addresses in Metromod cities

  1393 Sixt Avenue at 57 Street, Central Park South, Manhattan, New York City (studio together with Ruth Jacobi, 30.10.1935–19.09.1936); 24 West 59th Street, Central Park South, Manhattan, New York City (studio Lotte Jacobi, 19.09.1936–August 1938); 35 West 57th Street, Central Park South, Manhattan, New York City (residence & studio, Sept. 1938–Sept 1939); 154 West 54th Street, Times Square District, Manhattan, New York City (studio & residence, Sept. 1939–Sept. 1941); 46 West 52nd Street, Times Square District, Manhattan, New York City (residence & studio, Oct. 1941–June 1956).

• Metropolis
  New York
• Helene Roth. "Lotte Jacobi." METROMOD Archive, 2021, https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/2948/object/5138-9613251, last modified: 16-10-2022.
• Hermann Landshoff

  Photographer

  New York

  Besides outdoor fashion shots, Hermann Landshoff was a portrait and street photographer. During his time in New York, he captured the cultural, artistic and intellectual émigré scene as well as his photographer colleagues.

  Word Count: 33

  Walter Sanders

  Photographer

  New York

  Walter Sanders was a German émigré photographer. In 1938 he arrived in New York, where he worked from 1939 until the end of his life for the Black Star agency and, from 1944, for Life magazine.

  Word Count: 33

  Kurt Safranski

  Picture AgentFounding MemberTeacherCartoonistPublisherIllustrator

  New York

  Kurt Safranski was one of the founding members of the Black Star photo agency, a teacher at the New School for Social Research and the author of photojournalistic articles and books.

  Word Count: 31

  Werner Wolff

  Photographer

  New York

  Werner Wolff was forced to leave Germany in 1936 due to his Jewish background and emigrated via Hamburg to New York, where he could follow his career as photographer and photojournalist.

  Word Count: 30

  Andreas Feininger

  PhotographerWriterEditor

  New York

  Andreas Feininger, was a German émigré photographer who arrived in New York with his wife Wysse Feininger in 1939. He started a lifelong career exploring the city's streets, working as a photojournalist and writing a large number of photography manuals.

  Word Count: 39

  Ruth Bernhard

  Photographer

  New York

  Ruth Bernhard was a German émigré photographer who lived in New York from the 1920s to the 1940s. Beside her series on female nudes, her place in the photography network, as well as in the New York queer scene, is unknown and understudied.

  Word Count: 43

  Lisette Model

  Photographer

  New York

  Lisette Model was an Austrian-born photographer who lived in New York with her husband Evsa Model after emigrating from France. Her street photographs capturing the curiosities of everyday life quickly caught the interest of museums and magazines.

  Word Count: 37

  Charles Leirens

  PhotographerMusicianMusicologist

  New York

  Charles Leirens was a Belgian-born musician and photographer who emigrated to New York in 1941. While publishing two books on Belgian music, he also gave courses in musicology and photography at the New School for Social Research.

  Word Count: 36

  Marion Palfi

  Photographer

  New York

  Marion Palfi was a German émigré photographer who lived in New York from the 1940s to the 1960s. Her photographic engagement in social and political topics made her name for her use of the camera to draw attention to social injustices.

  Word Count: 41

  Tim Gidal

  PhotographerPublisherArt Historian

  New York

  Tim Gidal was a German-Jewish photographer, publisher and art historian emigrating in 1948 emigrated to New York. Besides his teaching career, he worked as a photojournalist and, along with his wife Sonia Gidal, published youth books.

  Word Count: 35

  Ellen Auerbach

  Photographer

  New York

  When she arrived in New York in 1937, the German-born photographer Ellen Auerbach (formerly Rosenberg) had already passed through exile stations in Palestine and Great Britain.

  Word Count: 25

  Ruth Jacobi

  Photographer

  New York

  Ruth Jacobi was a German-speaking, Polish-born photographer who emigrated in 1935 to New York, where she opened a studio together with her sister Lotte Jacobi. She later had her own portrait studio.

  Word Count: 31

  Gerda Peterich

  Photographer

  New York

  The German émigré Gerda Peterich had a photographic studio at 332 West 56th Street and in New York, where she specialised in dance and portraiture. In addition, she visited dance studios and photographed outside in the city.

  Word Count: 36

  Lilly Joss

  Photographer

  New York

  Lilly Joss was an émigré freelance photographer in New York. She worked for the Black Star photo agency and magazines and was also a portrait and theatre photographer.

  Word Count: 28

  Ylla

  Photographer

  New York

  Ylla was an Austrian-born photographer who emigrated to New York in 1941. Specialising in animal photography, she produced not only studio photographs, but also shot outside on urban locations in the metropolis.

  Word Count: 31

  Fritz Henle

  Photographer

  New York

  Fritz Henle was a German Jewish photographer who emigrated in 1936 to New York, where he worked as a photojournalist for various magazines. He also published several photobooks of his travels throughout North America and Asia.

  Word Count: 35

  T. Lux Feininger

  PhotographerPainter

  New York

  Lux T. Feininger was a German-American émigré photographer and painter and the brother of the photographer Andreas Feininger, arriving in 1936 in New York. Although he started taking photographs during the 1920s in Germany, Feininger is better known for his career as a painter and his photographic work is largely unacknowledged.

  Word Count: 50

  Trude Fleischmann

  Photographer

  New York

  Trude Fleischmann was an Austrian-Jewish portrait and dance photographer who emigrated in 1939 to New York, where she opened a studio in Midtown Manhattan with the photographer Frank Elmer.

  Word Count: 28

  Christmas Exhibition of The Center for European Immigrant's Art and Handicraft
  Schocken Books

  Publishing House

  New York

  Schocken Books was a publishing house established in 1945 in New York by the Russian émigré Salman Schocken (1898–1959). It specialised in books on Judaica and Hebrew topics.

  Word Count: 26

  Norlyst Gallery

  GalleryArt Gallery

  New York

  Founded in 1943 by the American painter and art collector Elenore Lust, the Norlyst Gallery represented a cross section of contemporary painting, photography and other media focusing on surrealist and abstract expressionist styles and promoting women artists and photographers.

  Word Count: 38

  Pavelle Laboratories Inc.

  Photo LabPhoto Supplier

  New York

  Pavelle Laboratories was found in 1936 by Leo and Carmen Pavelle and operated on East 42nd Street. It was specialised in the development of miniature camera film and one of the first labs working with colour film.

  Word Count: 36

  Josef Breitenbach

  Photographer

  New York

  On arriving in New York in 1941, the German photographer Josef Breitenbach tried to restart as a portrait, street and experimental photographer, as well as a teacher of photo-history and techniques.

  Word Count: 30

  Black Star Agency

  Photo Agency

  New York

  The German émigrés Kurt S(z)afranski, Ern(e)st Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld founded Black Star in 1936. The photo agency established was a well-run networking institution in New York.

  Word Count: 31

  PIX Publishing Inc.

  Photo Agency

  New York

  PIX Publishing Inc. was a photo agency founded in New York in 1935 by photo agent Leon Daniel and Celia Kutschuk, together with German émigré photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and George Karger.

  Word Count: 30

  Camera Features

  Photo Agency

  New York

  Camera Features was a photo agency founded by the photographer Werner Wolff and other colleagues of the photo agency PIX.

  Word Count: 20

  Rapho Guillumette

  Photo Agency

  New York

  Founded in 1940 by the emigrant Charles Rado (1899–1970), Rapho Guillumette was a picture agency.

  Word Count: 13

  Julien Levy Gallery

  Art Gallery

  New York

  The Julien Levy Gallery was founded by the art dealer Julien Levy (1906–1981) in 1931, and was situated in the New York gallery district around 57th Street, where the Weyhe and Norlyst Gallery were also located.

  Word Count: 34

  Beggar Bar

  Bar

  New York

  Beggar Bar was an artists bar and cabaret which was founded in 1941 by the German actress and dancer Valeska Gert (1892–1978).

  Word Count: 20