Suse Byk

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Suse Byk (born around 1890 in Berlin ; died 1942 or after 1960 in New York City ) was a German photographer . According to the judgment of her student Liselotte Strelow , she was Berlin's leading portrait photographer in the 1920s .

Life

Despite several attempts, Suse Byk's life could only be partially reconstructed. This also applies to her photographic work, which has not been preserved in one or more bundles, but only individual pieces in various collections and archives.

Suse Byk's year of birth is presumed to be 1885 or "before 1890". Suse Byk was born as the daughter of either the entrepreneur Heinrich Byk (1845-1923) and Agnes Bamberger or the daughter of his younger brother, the chemist Siegmund Byk (1856-1936). Siegmund Byk was married to Clara Byk - his cousin - who wrote a family story and died in Berlin in 1926. The chemist Siegmund Byk retired in 1905 from the board of directors of the Byk chemical factory founded in 1873 .

Suse Byk did an apprenticeship as a photographer, it is believed that she completed it at the Lette school . In 1910 she was accepted into the Photographische Verein zu Berlin . A photo studio under her name was first opened in 1911 at the private address Siegmund Byks on Kurfürstendamm 14/15 in III. Verifiable floor, later she took over the studio from Ernst Sandau . In 1913 she took part in the first “Conference for German Women Photographers” on the premises of the Berlin Women's Club, at which time she was called the master photographer . In the same year she opened a “studio for photographic portraits” under her name in the house at Kurfürstendamm 230, which she ran until 1938. The photographers Martha Maas and Lore Feininger began their photography apprenticeship with Suse Byk in 1916 and 1919 respectively. In 1929 Byk had five employees, and Siegmund Byk had the power of attorney in the company that year . He died before 1938. Suse Byk married the journalist and writer Hellmuth Falkenfeld after 1929 . In the Jewish address book for Greater Berlin in 1931 she was entered as Suse Falkenfeld.

A number of artists and scientists from 1920s Berlin were photographed in Byk's studio. Byk also had orders for fashion shoots for magazines in the 1920s and she worked as a theater photographer for the artists of the Städtische Oper . In 1926 she expanded her company name to include “family and film recordings”, since from 1924 she also made films of children and animals for private clients. In 1925 she made role portraits and film recordings of the expressive dancer Valeska Gert . In addition to role portraits of Georg Groke as Kastschej in Feuervogel and Rudolf von Laban , dance photographs of Vera Skoronel and the Skoronel-Trümpy group have been preserved. In 1927 she took a photo of Judith Kerr and her brother Michael Kerr in her studio .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Byk stayed in Berlin and continued to work under the conditions of anti-Semitism , although her work initially did not seem to be directly affected by the state measures, since a work of her was published in 1935. To emigrate under political pressure, she gave up in 1938 and tried to sell her business.

Liselotte Strelow had learned at Byk's company, she then worked at Kodak in Berlin. In 1938 she took over the business and apartment for the Aryanization price of RM 2,500, half of the sum demanded by Byk, and opened the studio under her name on October 1, 1938. In July 1939 the Byk company was deleted from the commercial register. The studio and the Byks photo archive that may be in it were destroyed in the aerial warfare .

At an unknown time between June 18 and October 1, 1938, Suse and Hellmuth Falkenfeld emigrated to London and from there to New York . Nothing is known about Suse Falkenfeld-Byk's whereabouts; it is believed that she died in New York in the early 1960s.

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

posthumously
  • People, places, times. Photography at the German Historical Museum , 2009, p. 353
  • Klaus Honnef , Frank Weyers: And they left Germany… had to: Photographers and their pictures 1928–1997 . Exhibition Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn , May 15 to August 24, 1997. Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn 1997, p. 92

Fonts (selection)

  • To the portrait . In: Usage Photography , Issue 5, 1933

literature

  • Kai Brückner: Byk, Suse . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 15, Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-22755-8 , p. 417.
  • Christiane Kuhlmann : Moving Body - Mechanical Apparatus. On the media entanglement of dance and photography in the 1920s using the examples of Charlotte Rudolph, Suse Byk and Lotte Jacobi . Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2003. Diss. Bochum 2001
  • Christiane Kuhlmann: Charlotte Rudolph. Dance photography 1924–1939 . Steidl, Göttingen 2004
  • Sidney Darchinger: Face as an event: Liselotte Strelow. Portrait photography 1939–1974 . Bonn 1997. Dissertation Bonn 1994
  • Ute Eskildsen (Ed.): Taking photos meant taking part. Photographers of the Weimar Republic , Museum Folkwang , Essen 1994. 3 photographs, reference on p. 306. Short bio on p. 314

Web links

Commons : Suse Byk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sidney Darchinger: Face as an event: Liselotte Strelow. Portrait photography 1939-1974 . Bonn 1997, p. 8, quoted in Kuhlmann, p. 109
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Christiane Kuhlmann: Moving body - mechanical apparatus . 2003, pp. 99-110
  3. ↑ At Kuhlmann's, Siegmund Byk is a son of Heinrich Byk
  4. ↑ Klaus Honnef, Frank Weyers: And they… had to leave Germany . 1999, p. 92
  5. ↑ On Siegmund and Clara Byk, see registration at the University of Zurich and the dissertation on desulfurization of rhodanguanidine . Diss. Leipzig 1879, at WorldCat
  6. ↑ a b c Suse Byk , at Deutsche Fotothek
  7. ^ Suse Byk studio for photographic portraits . Founded in 1919, Liq .: 1939. In: The database of Jewish businesses in Berlin 1930-1945 , at HU Berlin. See: Christoph Kreutzmüller: Sale: the destruction of Jewish commercial activity in Berlin 1930 - 1945 . Berlin: Metropol, 2012 ISBN 978-3-86331-080-6
  8. ↑ Falkenfeld, Hellmuth. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 478-481 (there wife Suse on p. 478).
  9. ↑ Falkenfeld, Suse . In: Jewish address book for Greater Berlin , 1931, p. 207. “Kurfürstendamm 230”.
  10. ↑ Photo Judith and Michael Kerr, 1927, in: Judith Kerr: A awakened childhood . Berlin: Argon, 1990 ISBN 3-87024-175-6
personal data
SURNAME Byk, Suse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1942 or after 1960
Place of death New York City