Germany 1993, 55 min.

Directed by: Antonia Lerch

Production: Harun Farocki Filmproduktion in cooperation with ARTE and ZDF

 

Ellen Auerbach was born in 1906 as Ellen Rosenberg in Karlsruhe. She studied sculpture and drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. However, she was fascinated by photography, which she began to learn in the Berlin studio of Walter Peterhans, where she also later met her accomplice Grete Stern. The photographers first ran a joint studio in Berlin and then in London, but the threat of persecution due to their Jewish origin forced them to move to the other hemisphere. Auerbach and her husband went to the United States. There she started working for “Time” magazine. In 1955, she travelled with photographer Eliot Porter to Mexico, where she created a whole series of photographs of local churches and three Mexican rituals. In the late '60s Auerbach dropped photography for esoteric and psychology, as well as teaching work. Ten years later, the photographer’s work was rediscovered. It has been exhibited at exhibitions at the Bauhaus–Archiv in Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, The Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Akademia der Künste in Berlin. This last institution received her entire oeuvre when she died in 2004. Since 2006, a young photographer has been awarded a scholarship bearing her name.