Marianne Breslauer

In just 10 years, Marianne Breslauers career as a photographer had marked her out as an ambitious photojournalist of the late Weimar Republic, before emigration and the outbreak of war brought this auspicious beginning to an abrupt halt. Educated from 1927 to 1929 at the renowned Lette-Haus in Berlin, Marianne Breslauer went next to Paris. Her first posting was with Man Ray, who told the 20-year-old that she could do everything already and warmly invited her to make use of his studio. She gladly took up the offer, yet her intrinsic domain remained the street: the quays of the Seine, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the street performers on the Rue dOrleans. These photos attracted the attention of the illustrated German newspapers, who soon furnished her with commissions. She photographed everyone who was anyone in the art world of late-1920s-Berlin, travelled to Spain with Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and portrayed Erika Manns cabaret, "The Pepper Mill", in Zurich. With an infallible intuition for atmosphere and compositional ingenuity, she captured the essence of life in an era coming to a close. In 1936 she had to emigrate from Germany, taking all her photography materials in her bag. The photographer Marianne Breslauer was only around for a single, brief decade. Following the Second World War, she became the art dealer Marianne Feilchenfeldt. Now, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her birth, the photographer is to be rediscovered anew. In this richly illustrated catalogue of works, her distinctive pictures will finally be visible once more.