Erica Anderson

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erica Anderson , née Erika Kellner (born August 8, 1914 in Vienna ; died September 23, 1976 in Great Barrington , Massachusetts ) was an Austrian - American camerawoman , photographer and documentary filmmaker .

Life

Anderson was born as Erika Kellner in 1914 into a Jewish family in Vienna. Her father was the doctor Eduard Kellner, her mother Ilona Rosenberg; she was the younger of two daughters. Like many young women from middle-class Jewish families in Vienna at the time, she trained to be a photographer. She graduated from the graphic teaching and research institute and then trained in Georg Fayer's photo studio .

On November 9, 1938, she fled National Socialism to London and found work in art galleries. In England she married the doctor William Adrian Collier Anderson in 1939. In 1940 she emigrated to the USA and studied photography at the New York Institute of Photography . In 1945 she graduated, divorced, and became an American citizen. In the same year she opened her own photo studio in New York to earn a living, and ran it until 1965.

She was one of the first professional camera women in the United States. In the 1940s she began to make documentaries, such as one about the sculptor Henry Moore in 1947 and “ Grandma Moses ” about the painter of the same name in 1950 . The latter, directed by Jerome Hill , was nominated for an Oscar for best short film.

During several trips to Africa in the 1950s, she met Albert Schweitzer . She took numerous photographs of him and was a camerawoman for a documentary about Schweitzer published in 1957. The film was made on her initiative; Anderson convinced Schweitzer of the project. The film " Albert Schweitzer " was shot over six years and became Anderson's most famous film. Again Jerome Hill was director and producer. The film received in 1958 the Oscar as Best Documentary .
In 1965 she made a second documentary about him in collaboration with Schweitzer's daughter, the 44-minute color film “The Living Work of Albert Schweitzer” . In 1966, a year after Schweitzer's death, she opened a museum about him in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the Albert Schweitzer Friendship House .

Her photographs have appeared in magazines such as Life and Look .

Erica Anderson died of a heart attack at her Great Barrington home at the age of 62.

Filmography

  • 1947: Henry Moore
  • 1948: French Tapestries Visit America
  • 1950: Grandma Moses
  • 1957: Albert Schweitzer
  • 1958: No Man Is a Stranger
  • 1965: The Living Work of Albert Schweitzer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 1: A-H. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , pp. 105f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Andrea Winklbauer: Biography of the month: Suspected of having an Oscar: the photographer and filmmaker Erica Anderson. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon. August 2014, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c Erika Anderson - The camerawoman. In: Albert Schweitzer: The message. Retrieved March 20, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Thomas W. Ennis: Erica Anderson, 62, a Film Maker And Schweitzer Associate, Is Dead . In: The New York Times . September 25, 1976, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 20, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Erica
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kellner, Erika (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American camerawoman, photographer and documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 23rd September 1976
Place of death Great Barrington , Massachusetts