Biography

Ilse Bing was a leader among those who made Paris the center of modern photography in the 1930s. Moving in a milieu that included the likes of Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, and Brassaï, she came to be known as "Queen of the Leica" for her influential mastery of the hand-held camera that revolutionised the medium in the period. Fleeing the war, she emigrated to New York in 1941 and, although she retired from photography in 1959, her career was rediscovered in the late 1970s and was celebrated in a series of major retrospectives. She died in 1998, just a few days before her 99th birthday.

Born into a bourgeois Jewish family in Frankfurt, Ilse Bing seemed set for an academic career but abandoned it to devote herself to photography. In 1930 she moved to Paris and began an extraordinary decade that saw her working in photojournalism, portraiture, advertising. She also shot fashion accessories for Harper's Bazaar. She won commercial success even while establishing herself at the forefront of the city's avant-garde, and she forged a distinctive personal style by blending all the vital currents that were then shaping the medium. She adored the romanticism, symbolism and dream-imagery of Surrealism; she shared the technological enthusiasms and love of startling perspectives that intrigued advocates of 'New Vision' photography; and she accepted the creed of documentary photographers who were striving to produce truer and more incisive records of the world. 

 

Her Self-Portrait with Leica (1931) remains an icon of modernist photography, and an emblem of a time when many women were embracing modernity and independence, along with the new opportunities that technology afforded for artistic expression.

Ilse Bing: Photography Through the Looking Glass, a major monograph by Larisa Dryansky, was published by Abrams in 2006. An important retrospective of her work exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1985, and the International Center of Photography, New York, in 1986; a survey was also held at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, in 1988.. Her work can be found in many major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Works
  • Ilse Bing photograph looking down on man and woman in black tie sitting down
    Ilse Bing
    Bal de la Couture, Paris, 1931
  • Ilse Bing photograph of visitors climbing up the stairs to the Eiffel Tower Paris
    Ilse Bing
    "It Was So Windy in the Eiffel Tower," Paris, 1931
  • Ilse Bing photograph of woman on stage and man behind transparent sheet, embracing
    Ilse Bing
    Ballet Errante, Paris, 1933
  • Ilse Bing photograph of bourgeois man walking along path
    Ilse Bing
    Bourgeois Walking Along Path, Versailles, 1931
  • Ilse Bing photograph looking down on table with flowers and two chairs
    Ilse Bing
    Brissago, Switzerland, 1934
  • Ilse Bing photograph of Cancan Dancer twirling dress in Moulin-Rouge Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Cancan Dancer, Moulin-Rouge, Paris, 1933
  • Cancan Dancers, Moulin-Rouge, Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Cancan Dancers, Moulin-Rouge, Paris, 1931
  • Ilse Bing photograph of dancer Willem Van Loop leaping into air in Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Dancer, Willem Van Loon, Paris, 1932
  • Ilse Bing photograph of Eiffel Tower illuminated at night in Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Eiffel Tower at Night, 1934
  • Ilse Bing photograph of our dancers in the Ballet Errante wearing white
    Ilse Bing
    Four Dancers in the Ballet Errante, Paris, 1933
  • Ilse Bing photograph of dancers legs in sync from the Laban Dance School in Frankfurt
    Ilse Bing
    Laban Dance School, Frankfurt, 1929
  • Ilse Bing photograph of the Statue of Liberty through a round window
    Ilse Bing
    New York Harbor, August 3, 1951
  • Ilse Bing photograph of Pont ALexandre III with view of Trocadero Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Pont Alexandre III with View of Trocadero, Paris, 1935
  • Self-Portrait with Leica, Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Self-Portrait with Leica, Paris, 1931
  • Silhouettes, Avenue du Maine, Paris
    Ilse Bing
    Silhouettes, Avenue du Maine, Paris, 1932
  • Ilse Bing photograph of street cleaner in Paris from apartment building
    Ilse Bing
    Street Cleaner, Paris, 1947
  • Ilse Bing photograph of girls dancing outside street organ in Amsterdam
    Ilse Bing
    Street organ, Amsterdam, 1933
  • Ilse Bing photograph of windows and balcony with laundry in Switzerland
    Ilse Bing
    Windows, Balcony, Laundry, Cureglia, Switzerland, 1934
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