Ilse Bing

Born in Germany in 1899, Ilse Bing died in New York in 1998, and over her long career she came to be regarded as one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. Working during the interwar years, she developed a modern way of seeing shaped by Bauhaus design and Surrealism. Alongside her own projects, she took commissions in photojournalism, architecture, advertising and fashion. Her pictures appeared in the leading magazines of the day and were shown in exhibitions in France and Germany.

Bing moved from Frankfurt to Paris in 1931. When German forces took the French capital during the Second World War, she and her husband, both of Jewish background, were expelled and interned in the south of France. They emigrated to New York in 1941, and she lived there until her death.

Interest in her work grew from the 1970s, when she first exhibited at MoMA in New York, and this revival extended to European photography of the 1920s and 1930s more broadly. Bing is regarded as one of the key creative forces of that era.