- Jacobi made photographs for Heartfield,
some for his montages and some for book covers.
During the 1930s, the theater and the arts became
her primary subjects; she extended her interest to
include dance and eventually film. Film and dance
were important components of her early studies
and influenced her photography stylistically. Li-
quid forms and fluid motion became a hallmark
of her works associated with dancers and actors.
To accomplish her indoor work without a flash, she
began to use a 912-cm Ermanox, one of only
nine such cameras made during 1928–1929. During
this period, she reluctantly switched from the use of
glass plate negatives to celluloid film.
Pursuant to her love for the theater, Jacobi began
a series of theater portraits, appearing during and
after dress rehearsals when it was permissible to
photograph the actors. Portraits of stage actors
Peter Lorre, Franz Lederer, and Lotte Lenya,
which have become her iconic photographs, are
some of the most original and modern images,
even by today’s standards. Jacobi’s portrait style,
characterized by experimentation with abstrac-
tion—unusual perspectives, cropped-heads, and
high or low-angle shots—places her work firmly
among the German school of photography known
as theNeue Sachlichkiet(New Objectivity) and the
experimental works of Russian photographer and
graphic artist Alexandr Rodchenko.
Jacobi’s works, like those by the New Objectivity
practitioners, are beautiful formalist images that
appear intended for press advertising and today
help define the visual style of the Weimar Republic.
In 1930, her work appeared in a modernist exhibit in
Munich,Das Lichtbild, organized by Max Burchartz,
and mounted the following year in Essen. Although
she worked closely with avant-garde photography
methods, Jacobi always privileged the expressive
content of her images over formal aesthetics.
While still in Europe, a client in Berlin arranged for
Jacobi to travel to the Soviet Union from the fall of
1932toJanuary,1933.Herworkfromthisfour-month
sojourn reflects her response to the diversity of peo-
ple, places, and geography. Much of her early work
prior to her coming to the United States has been lost.
Of Jewish heritage on both sides and upon the
death of her father in 1935, Jacobi with her son John
fled the inhospitable climate of Nazi Germany, and
they settled in the United States; she became a nat-
uralized citizen in 1940. Once in New York, she
opened a portrait studio with her sister Ruth at the
corner of Sixth Avenue and 57th Street in October,
- She eventually flourished in a succession of
studios on her own in New York City from 1935–
1955 and maintained a gallery during 1952–1955. In
1938, she was the first woman to photograph on the
floor of the New York Stock Exchange during trad-
ing hours. She held an instant celebrity status as a
refugee witness of German culture before the rise of
the Nazi Party. Her photographs appeared in the
SundayHerald Tribuneshortly after her arrival.
Jacobi’s portraits made in America are equally
captivating as those from her German period, pos-
sessing the immediacy of the moment and the pre-
sence of the person portrayed. The images reveal the
photographer’s willingness to observe her subject
rather than direct the proceedings; the sitters appear
to have been caught slightly unaware. Photograph-
ing luminaries Albert Einstein, First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt, actor Paul Robson, and painter Marc
Chagall among others, Jacobi achieved naturalism
in her portraiture work by instilling a relaxed atmo-
sphere. She explained her approach to portraiture:
My style is the style of the people I photograph. In
making portraits, I refuse to photographymyself,as do
so many photographers.
(Wise 1978, p.8)
While photographing her subjects, often in the
sitter’s own surroundings, Jacobi converses casual-
ly, uses existing light, and waits for her subjects to
come into their own. Jacobi penetrates her subject’s
self-conscious, translating the sitter’s personality to
the permanent image. In 1939, whenLifemagazine
did an essay on Einstein, he insisted that Jacobi be
one of the photographers.
Shortly after arriving in America, she met Ger-
man publisher and fellow e ́migre ́Erich Reiss, and
the couple married in 1940. Reiss took over the
accounting and management of Jacobi’s studio in
New York. Reiss died in 1951.
In America, Jacobi’s oeuvre took on many shifts
in style, moving from objectivity to photogenic
drawings called ‘‘light abstractions.’’ In 1946, when
her husband Erich Reiss became ill, and as a form of
therapy, she suggested they both began a course in
photograms taught by Leo Katz at the Atelier 17, an
artistic center in New York City. Jacobi’s unique
vision of an already explored process translated to
her capturing fragile abstract patterns on light-sen-
sitive paper created by moving objects and lights.
Katz called her camera-less work made in the 1950s
‘‘photogenics.’’ To achieve the abstracted patterned
effect, she used candles, flashlights, glass, cello-
phane, and paper cut in odd shapes.
A collection of photographs Jacobi made in the
1930s and 40s, a documentary of New York City,
remained an important personal project but one
that was never exhibited.
JACOBI, LOTTE
