Use Bing

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Ilse Bing (born March 23, 1899 in Frankfurt am Main ; † March 10, 1998 in New York ) was a German-American photographer .

Live and act

Ilse Bing was born into a wealthy Jewish family of Frankfurt merchants as the daughter of the merchant Louis Bing and his wife Johanna Elli Bing, nee. Katz, born. In 1920 she began studying mathematics and physics at Frankfurt University, then turned to art history and spent the winter semester of 1923/1924 at the Vienna Art History Institute .

Her photographic practice came about when she began working on a dissertation on the architect Friedrich Gilly in 1924/1925 . For documentation purposes she acquired a Voigtlander 9x12 cm camera. When she finished her studies in 1929 and gave up her dissertation, she turned entirely to photography, bought a Leica (35mm camera) and worked photojournalistic . First reports published z. B. The illustrated sheet , Frankfurt. In 1930 she was able to publish a documentation about the old people's home in Frankfurt designed from 1928 to 1930 by architects Mart Stam , Ferdinand Kramer , Werner Moser and Erika Habermann in the publication for the housing program “ Neues Frankfurt ” . She also had a close friendship with the photographer and filmmaker couple Ella Bergmann-Michel and Robert Michel .

Parisian and New York years

At the end of 1930 Ilse Bing moved to Paris and continued her photographic work there. She received reportage assignments through the mediation of the Hungarian journalist Heinrich Guttmann . She has worked for VU , Le Monde Illustré , Le Document and Arts et Métiers Graphiques , among others . In 1931 she exhibited her work in France and Germany. The outstanding quality of her prints led the photographer and critic Emmanuel Sougez to describe Ilse Bing as the “Queen of the Leica”. In addition to her work on photo reports, Ilse Bing experimented with the technology of solarization in the photo laboratory during 1934 , independently of the works by Man Ray that were being created at the same time .

After taking part in a group exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, Ilse Bing's works were shown in the 1936 “International Exhibition of Contemporary Photography” at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris . In 1937 she was a participant in the exhibition "Photography 1839-1937" organized by Beaumont Newhall at the Museum of Modern Art , New York.

After German troops invaded France in 1940, Bing was taken to the Camp de Gurs internment camp together with her husband, the German pianist and musicologist Konrad Wolff , whom she married in Paris in 1937 . Both managed to escape and emigrate to the United States via Marseille . They settled in New York. Ilse Bing had her most creative creative phase in Paris, however, and this is where she felt rooted: “I'm actually only rooted in Paris [...] When I walk on the Parisian pavement, I feel the contact. It is a living contact with the ground, with the air. When I walk the streets of Paris, the past is alive. When I walk down the street here [in New York] and see old buildings, then [...] there is always a distance. "

In 1947 she made a trip to Germany and France, in 1951 and 1952 she visited Paris. At that time she took photos with a medium format camera ( Rolleiflex ). In 1957 she turned away from black and white photography and concentrated on working with color negatives . In 1959 she gave up photography. As a result, texts, collages and drawings were created.

Ilse Bing always took photos from a very individual point of view, both for portraits and for countless architectural photos. It was strongly influenced by the style of André Kertész 'and Brassaïs . Unusual perspectives, extreme angles or strong enlargements characterize her subject. Like Brassaï, she experimented with different lighting conditions, such as taking pictures at night or in the rain.

Ilse Bing's work was rediscovered in the 1970s. In 1976 a first solo exhibition took place in "The Witkin Gallery", the Museum of Modern Art initiated the publication of her photographs at Ikon Press, New York, under the title Numbers in Images ; Women from the Cradle to Old Age followed in 1982 .

From 1984 onwards, Ilse Bing made numerous appearances in the USA and Germany as a speaker on the development of modern art, particularly photography.

Awards

  • 1990: Women's Caucus for Art Award , New York.
  • 1993: First Gold Medal Award for Photography from the National Arts Club , New York.

Exhibitions (selection)

Literature (selection)

  • Nancy C. Barrett: Ilse Bing: Three Decades of Photography. Catalog New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans 1985, ISBN 0-89494-022-8 .
  • Use Bing. Photographs 1929–1956. Catalog Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 1996, ISBN 3-929203-12-X .
  • A feast for the eyes - The Paris Myth - Ré Soupault , Ilse Bing and Marianne Breslauer . In: Unda Hörner: Madame Man Ray: Avant-garde photographers in Paris. Ed. Ebersbach, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-934703-36-4 .

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emmanuel Sougez: XXIXe Salon international d'art photographique. In: Bulletin de la Societé Francaise de Photographie et de Cinématographie. September 21, 1932. p. 182.
  2. ^ Herlinde Koelbl: Jewish portraits, photographs and interviews. Frankfurt a. M. 1989, p. 26.
personal data
SURNAME Bing, Ilse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1998
Place of death New York , NY