Ursula Seitz-Gray

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Ursula Seitz-Gray née Ursula Gray (born March 30, 1932 in Bydgoszcz , Poland , formerly Bromberg ; † January 23, 2017 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German photographer.

Life

Ursula Gray grew up in Bydgoszcz , the former Prussian city of Bromberg . Her parents were the businessman Bruno Gray and Hildegard Gray, née Pietsch. Her sister was the journalist Christa Kroha (née Gray, 1934–2012). After the end of the war, the family had to flee Poland. After stays in Saalfeld / Saale and Bamberg , where she did her Abitur, Ursula Gray came to Frankfurt am Main in 1950. There she completed an apprenticeship as a photographer at Fritz Brieke Söhne. She was the assistant to the press and industrial photographer Sepp Jäger (1906–1976) and the studio photographer Erich Rossel. She then studied at the State Higher Technical School for Photography in Cologne. After she received her diploma as a photo engineer there, she passed her master craftsman examination at the Cologne Chamber of Commerce. She was married to the Frankfurt art and theater sponsor Rudi Seitz (1930–2002). Both interests in theater and art complemented each other. So their activities related to each other and overlapped despite their thematic specialization - with Ursula Seitz-Gray photography and with him art promotion. The daughter Gabriele Seitz, an archaeologist at the University of Freiburg, comes from their marriage.

Rudi Seitz initially worked at the Städtische Bühnen from 1947 , among other things as assistant dramaturge to Richard Weichert and Harry Buckwitz . He wrote the documentation for the book "Frankfurt und seine Theater" by the journalist and writer Heinrich Heym, which was created in 1963 on the occasion of the opening of the double theater complex consisting of a theater and an opera house . Seitz recorded all productions and alternative venues after 1945 as well as the ensemble of the theater in Frankfurt, Ursula Seitz-Gray worked as a photographer for the municipal theaters. In 1972 Rudi Seitz became a close employee of the department head Hilmar Hoffmann in the municipal office for science and art and as such a professional and private sponsor of the Frankfurt art scene. The Rudi Seitz Art Prize, founded in 2005, also goes back to Ursula Seitz-Gray's initiative and is named after him. In addition to the prize money, the award includes a bronze elephant cast by Beckmann's student Alfred Nungesser . "The elephant is said to have a great memory, and so did my husband," explained Seitz-Gray in 2012.

plant

Ursula Seitz-Gray photographed members of the ensemble for the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt, as well as stage sets and theater scenes. Many of her recordings are kept in the Institute for Urban History in Frankfurt. The holdings include topographical city photographs by Ursula Seitz-Gray, as well as photographs of events and personalities of Frankfurt city and cultural life. She also took photos for Frankfurt museums, including the Historical Museum Frankfurt (HMF), the Museum of Arts and Crafts , the Jewish Museum and Museum Giersch . She made repro photos of exhibits, recordings for documentation and catalogs. She was the author of the Library of Generations at HMF. Ursula Seitz-Gray worked as a freelance photographer in Frankfurt am Main from 1956 until her death in 2017.

Exhibitions

For the Frankfurt Painting Academy, the theater and art photographer Seitz-Gray put together a special set of works for an exhibition in 2000: “First Journey to Paris” (December 23, 2000– January 12, 2001), showed photos from 1951. These and other motifs from Seitz-Gray's study trips from the 1950s were presented in the exhibition “Paris, a festival for life” at the Museum Goch (January 11, 2020– April 19, 2020).

Award

In 1953 she received the first prize for photography from the European Marshall Plan.

publication

Petra Kammann: Ursula Seitz-Gray: Paris , Verlag Henrich Druck + Medien, Frankfurt am Main 2020, 84 pages, ISBN 978-3-944542-20-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information based on Petra Kammann: Ursula Seitz-Gray: Paris, Goch and Frankfurt am Main, 2020, p. 81
  2. ^ Foundation and history of the HFP Cologne
  3. ↑ Rudi Seitz - We all knew him , biographical text about Rudi Seitz on the Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer Foundation website (accessed on April 3, 2020)
  4. ↑ Hans Riebsamen: Eine Frankfurter Kultur-Legende , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 268, November 16, 2016, p. 35, portrait of Rudi Seitz on the occasion of the exhibition of his theater collection in the Historisches Museum Frankfurt
  5. ^ Heinrich Heym: Frankfurt und seine Theater , 286 pp., Waldemar Kramer Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1963
  6. ↑ Rudi Seitz Art Prize , award, awarded by the Frankfurter Malakademie eV and the Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer Foundation eV (accessed on April 3, 2020)
  7. ↑ Alfred Nungesser biography
  8. ↑ cf. Institute for City History Frankfurt, archive database image
  9. ↑ cf. Art pieces of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt , Volume 5, Library of Generations , Verlag Henrich Druck + Medien, Frankfurt am Main, 111 pages, 2017 ISBN 978-3-943407-84-6
  10. ↑ cf. Dame und Clochard , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Kultur (Frankfurt), No. 292, January 15, 2000, p. 69, article about the exhibition of the Paris photos from 1951
  11. ↑ Exhibition in the Museum Goch (accessed on April 3, 2020)
  12. ↑ Exhibition at Museum Goch: Under the Bridges of the Seine , in: RP online, January 10, 2020 (accessed on April 3, 2020)
  13. ↑ Petra Kammann: Homage to the Frankfurt photographer Ursula Seitz-Gray in the Museum Goch (accessed on April 3, 2020)
personal data
SURNAME Seitz-Gray, Ursula
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gray, Ursula (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Bydgoszcz , Bromberg
DATE OF DEATH 23rd January 2017
Place of death Frankfurt am Main