Ilse Bing

Ilse Bing was born in 1899 in Frankfurt, Germany. She studied art history and mathematics at the universities of Frankfurt and Vienna in the late 1920s. In order to finish her dissertation, she bought a Leica camera and taught herself photography; she fell in love with the art form and by 1930 she was living in Paris and working as a freelance photographer. Along with her assignments, she was also exhibiting her work in important shows and galleries. With the threat of fascism looming, Ilse Bing fled to America where she had to start anew. She found work as a photographer doing portraits, fashion studies and picture essays.

Ilse Bing was never afraid to experiment and try new techniques and she did so throughout her career. She was one of the first to solely use a small format camera (Leica) in the 1930s and in 1948 she was one of the few using a Rollieflex 2 1/4-inch negative. She was among the first to use electronic flash, solarize her negatives, and to photograph extensively at night. In 1957 she stopped doing black and white photography and developed and printed her own color work. Then in 1959 she abandoned photography all together and concentrated on painting, poetry and collages. In 1976 she published Numbers in Images and is rediscovered as a photographer by the Museum of Modern Art of New York. In 1982 she published Women from Childhood to Old Age. Her work is in such collections as the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Chicago Art Institute.

Links:

• V&A Museums
• The Art Institute of Chicago