Elly Niebuhr

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Elly Niebuhr-Gellert née Prager-Mandowsky (born March 25, 1914 in Vienna ; † March 18, 2013 there ) was an Austrian photographer whose life's work was not recognized historically until very late - at the age of 95.

Life and accomplishments

She spent her youth in a liberal environment, but after the annexation of Austria in 1938 she had to break off her training at the graphic teaching and research institute and her apprenticeship as a photographer with Hella Katz (where Anton Trčka was also trained) and in 1939 she emigrated to England. Between 1937 and 1939 she created numerous Viennese milieu studies, in particular of the Vienna Prater and the buildings of “ red Vienna ” and its inhabitants, but also her first fashion photos. Her parents were killed in the Hungarian extermination camps , but Elly Niebuhr and her sister found a new home in New York . She began to work as a portrait photographer for Hal Halpern and married Hans Niebuhr, whose name she kept as a stage name even after the separation that followed (and also after her second marriage to the journalist Peter Gellert).

Elly Niebuhr returned to Vienna via Paris in 1947 and set up her spacious photo studio in her parents' apartment, which had meanwhile been "Aryanized" and restored. Her photographic perspective was influenced by her increasingly communist attitude in the 1950s and 1960s . In turn, she turned to various milieu studies and depicting everyday life in Vienna. At the same time, she increasingly became a sought-after fashion and advertising photographer, working for Fred Adlmüller and the Pelzhaus Liska, but also for Thonet and the Wiener Werkstätten . Her photo reports appeared in almost all German and Austrian fashion magazines. The critical distance that she nevertheless maintained from consumer society characterized her artistic work. The University of Applied Arts Vienna is concerned since 2009 with the investigation of her life's work, which was handed over by her son Thomas Gellert, and curated in November 2010 Elly Niebuhr's first solo exhibition on "the 1950s in Vienna."

Exhibitions

  • November 10th to December 17th, 2010: Heiligenkreuzer Hof "Rediscovered photos by Elly Niebuhr - The 50s in Vienna" , opening November 9th in the presence of Elly Niebuhr

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.dieangewandte.at/jart/prj3/angewandte/main.jart?rel=de&content-id=1229508255639&aktuelles_id=1363367787464&reserve-mode=active
  2. ↑ http://www.boehlau.at/978-3-205-78364-0.html
  3. ↑ Photography: Vienna between departure and sadness . In: The press . ( diepresse.com [accessed December 5, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Niebuhr, Elly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Niebuhr-Gellert, Elly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2013
Place of death Vienna