WASHINGTON, D.C.-  Over 80 vintage photographic prints that span the six decades of Lotte Jacobi’s distinguished career will be on view in Focus on the Soul: The Photographs of Lotte Jacobi at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). This major retrospective is the first in the U.S. to feature Jacobi’s famous portrait photographs as well as her under-examined stage photographs from pre-World War II Berlin and New York, her abstract Photogenics series, and documentary images taken during her travels through Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Americas.

 

“Lotte Jacobi’s remarkable photographs resulting from her long, successful career highlight her ease with her subjects as well as her technical accomplishments,” said NMWA Director Judy L. Larson. “The women’s museum is honored to host this retrospective, the first to examine both the extraordinary innovation and breadth of Jacobi’s work.”

 

Lotte Jacobi (1896–1990) was a fourth-generation photographer born into a Jewish family in the Prussian town of Thorn, now part of Poland. In 1920 after receiving her formal training in Munich she moved to Berlin, where she took over the family studio in 1927. Drawn to the vibrant culture of the stage since her student days, Jacobi photographed the stars of the Weimar era in the ‘20s and early ‘30s. She often photographed dancers and actors at work, displaying the artistic versatility and interest in movement that would continue throughout her career.

 

Jacobi became the second woman ever to receive permission to photograph in the Soviet Union, after American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White. She experimented with travel photography in Moscow and Central Asia in 1932-33. These photographs of people and their living conditions often reflect the contrast between traditional and modern Soviet lifestyles in Central Asia.

 

The rise of fascism in Germany led to Jacobi’s immigration to New York City in 1935. She took with her only a fraction of her photo archive, the remainder of which was destroyed by the Nazis during the war. Jacobi quickly opened a studio and found work from fellow émigrés such as Peter Lorre, Lotte Lenya, and Max Reinhardt, but the Depression and aesthetic differences between German and American photography made the adjustment difficult. In 1938 she was hired by Life magazine to photograph Albert Einstein, although her now-celebrated images of the scientific genius were deemed too casual for publication at the time. In 1940 Jacobi met and married prominent German-Jewish publisher and Holocaust survivor Erich Reiss (1887-1951). He became an inspiration, helpmate, and business partner, and successfully ran her photography studio from their apartment on 52nd Street.

 

Jacobi’s greatest contribution to the history of photography came with her Photogenics images in the 1940s, in which she created emotive shapes and contours by drawing with light on photographic paper. Visually and stylistically, they are closely associated with Abstract Expressionism. Several of these works were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in group exhibitions in 1948 and 1951.

 

After the death of her husband in 1951, Jacobi moved to Deering, N.H., where she photographed abstract studies of the countryside. Her presence and reputation soon attracted the attention of the community, and her first retrospective was held at the nearby Currier Museum of Art in Manchester in 1959, where she was appointed honorary curator of photography. Jacobi remained active in the photographic arts, opening a gallery and mentoring young artists, until her death in 1990.

 

Admission during the time of the exhibition is $8 for adults, $6 for students and visitors 60 and over, and free for NMWA members and youth 18 and under. Free Community Days are the first Sunday and Wednesday of each month. On June 22, Atina Grossmann, associate professor of history at The Cooper Union, will provide historical context for Lotte Jacobi’s work as a woman photographer in Weimar Germany.

 

Focus on the Soul: The Photographs of Lotte Jacobi was organized by the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H. Presentation of the exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts is made possible by The Women’s Committee and Members of NMWA. Coordinating curator is Britta Konau, NMWA associate curator of modern and contemporary art.