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About the photographer Marianne BRESLAUER (née Feilchenfeldt; 1909-2001)
Marianne BRESLAUER was a German photographer at the time of the Weimar Republic and an art dealer. Dramatizing image composition was typical for her. Because of her admiration for the well-known Berlin portrait and society photographer Frieda RIESS, she attended the photography class at the Photographische Lehranstalt Lettehaus in Berlin from 1927 to 1929. At the age of 20, she passed her exams there. In 1929 she took part in the Stuttgart exhibition 'Film und Foto' of the Deutscher Werkbund and fulfilled her dream of a stay in Paris. There, she briefly became a student of MAN RAY, who encouraged her to become independent. "Paris was the destination of my dreams - that's where I wanted to live for a while, if at all possible," she later wrote in her memoirs. Because, in view of the dynamics of this city, she could get no further with the learned means of studio photography, she pursued a completely new pictorial language and thus violated the aesthetic norm of the academically taught photography that prevailed at the time. She was particularly interested in the works of André KERTÉSZ. Her goal was reportage in the style of the New Seeing, trying to make use of the 'invisible camera' of Erich SALOMON. In 1933 she got a job at the Berlin photo studio Ullstein; in the same year she had to leave Germany because of the National Socialists. She lived without a permanent residence until 1936, when she moved to Amsterdam and married the art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt, who had also emigrated from Germany. She gave up photography in 1937 and devoted herself to the art trade together with her husband. In the 1980s, her photographic work was rediscovered, and numerous publications and exhibitions were dedicated to her, including one at the New National Gallery in Berlin. Marianne BRESLAUER died in 2001.
Photo books with works by and about Marianne BRESLAUER
- 'Retrospective Fotografie' (1979); 'Photographien 1927-1937 ' (1989); 'Marianne Breslauer. Fotografien von Christina Feilchenfeldt' (2010); 'Scharfsinnige Frauen (Sharp-eyed Women): Footgrafinnen in Paris' (2010, 2020); 'Bilder meines Lebens: Erinnerungen' (2012); ' 1880-2015' (2017, together with works by Max BAUMANN, Kurt BUCHWALD, Tim GIDAL, Thomas HOEPKER, Sven JOHNE, Robert PETSCHOW, Hans PIELER, Wolf LÜTZEN, Evelyn RICHTER, Erich SALOMON, Hans-Christian SCHINK, Heidi SPECKER, Wolfgang TILLMANS, Karl VON WESTERHOLT), Ulrich WÜST as well as by Tobias ZIELONY).