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- Location
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Madame d'Ora (1881-1963), born as Dora Philippine Kallmus.
The Viennese high-society jumped at the chance to be photographed by Madame d'Ora. Anita Berber, Josephine Baker, Anna Pawlowa, Maurice Chevalier, princesses, actors, the viennese bohème, all urged to her. They all wanted such elegant portraits, she did in the beginning of the 20th century.
It wasn't Madame d'Oras idea to show character-portraits. She wanted to stage the "beautiful surface". Her female motifs were recommended to wear soft foulards, fur, scarves and so on.
She opened her first atelier in 1907 and quickly, she became the photographer of the Viennese high-society and the artists bohéme. She was photographer of society and fashion. In the ten-years, she was one of the most important fashion-photographers of her time and in the twenties she characterized the "new woman".
In 1925, she moved to Paris and things kept going, until the german army marched in, in 1940. She had to sell her atelier and then, she hid herself in a little village in the area of Ardeche, in the southeast of France. This way, she survived the holocaust. She also tried to emigrate to Spain, but that misscarried and her sister, she wanted to bring out of Austria, was murdered in a concentration-camp.
After the end of WW II, she photographed "displaced persons" in collection-camps in Austria. But in the fifties, she decided to finally break with the false front of beauty and surface. She went to stockyards in Paris and photographed dead meat and created series of nightmarish photographs.
She wanted to force the viewer to look exactly.
The Viennese high-society jumped at the chance to be photographed by Madame d'Ora. Anita Berber, Josephine Baker, Anna Pawlowa, Maurice Chevalier, princesses, actors, the viennese bohème, all urged to her. They all wanted such elegant portraits, she did in the beginning of the 20th century.
It wasn't Madame d'Oras idea to show character-portraits. She wanted to stage the "beautiful surface". Her female motifs were recommended to wear soft foulards, fur, scarves and so on.
She opened her first atelier in 1907 and quickly, she became the photographer of the Viennese high-society and the artists bohéme. She was photographer of society and fashion. In the ten-years, she was one of the most important fashion-photographers of her time and in the twenties she characterized the "new woman".
In 1925, she moved to Paris and things kept going, until the german army marched in, in 1940. She had to sell her atelier and then, she hid herself in a little village in the area of Ardeche, in the southeast of France. This way, she survived the holocaust. She also tried to emigrate to Spain, but that misscarried and her sister, she wanted to bring out of Austria, was murdered in a concentration-camp.
After the end of WW II, she photographed "displaced persons" in collection-camps in Austria. But in the fifties, she decided to finally break with the false front of beauty and surface. She went to stockyards in Paris and photographed dead meat and created series of nightmarish photographs.
She wanted to force the viewer to look exactly.
