29 Facts About Ilse Bing

Ilse Bing was a German avant-garde and commercial photographer who produced pioneering monochrome images during the inter-war era.

Ilse Bing began studying mathematics and physics at Frankfurt University in 1920, but shortly afterwards turned to art history and the history of architecture.

In 1924, Ilse Bing began a dissertation on the architect Friedrich Gilly.

Ilse Bing received reportage assignments through the mediation of the Hungarian journalist Heinrich Guttmann.

Ilse Bing's move from Frankfurt to the burgeoning avant-garde and surrealist scene in Paris marked the start of the most notable period of her career.

Ilse Bing produced images in the fields of photojournalism, architectural photography, advertising and fashion, and her work was published in magazines such as Le Monde Illustre, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue.

In 1933, Ilse Bing left Avenue de Maine and moved to Rue de Varenne, No 8.

When Ilse Bing visited New York in 1936, she received the offer to work as a photographer for Life magazine, which she turned down in order not to be separated from Wolff, who lived in Paris.

Ilse Bing remained in Paris for ten years, but in 1940, when Paris was taken by the Germans during World War II, she and her husband who were both Jews, were expelled and interned in separate camps in the South of France.

Ilse Bing spent six weeks in a camp in Gurs, in the Pyrenees, where she met Hannah Arendt.

The Affidavit of Sponsorship required for this was issued by the author and journalist Hendrik Willem van Loon, whom Ilse Bing had already met in 1930.

In New York, Ilse Bing had to re-establish her reputation, and although she got steady work in advertising and portrait photography, she failed to receive important commissions as in Paris.

Some of her original prints were lost when Ilse Bing had to choose which prints to keep.

Ilse Bing's style was very different; the softness that characterized her work in the 1930s gave way to hard forms and clear lines, with a sense of harshness and isolation.

From 1950 Ilse Bing worked with a Rolleiflex, which she used in alternation with the Leica for the next two years, but in 1952 decided to work exclusively with the medium format of the Rolleiflex.

Ilse Bing felt the medium was no longer adequate for her, and seemed to have tired of it.

Ilse Bing published her first book in 1976 under the title Words as Visions at Ilkon.

The emerging attention that Ilse Bing has enjoyed from the 1970s through the 1980s can be traced back to the growing fascination and interest in European photography of the 1920s and 1930s.

From 1984 onwards, Ilse Bing made a number of appearances in the USA and Germany as a speaker on the development of modern art, especially photography.

Ilse Bing was interested in combining mathematics, words, and images.

Ilse Bing died on March 10,1998, shortly before her ninety-ninth birthday, in New York.

Ilse Bing always took photos from a very individual point of view, both for portraits and for countless architectural photos.

Ilse Bing's work was shaped by contemporary abstract and non-representational painting as well as by New Vision and Surrealism.

Ilse Bing discovered a type of solarisation for negatives independently of a similar process developed by the artist Man Ray.

Ilse Bing always worked without additional lighting and operated exclusively with the existing lighting conditions.

Ilse Bing used both artificial light sources such as illuminated windows, lanterns, street lamps, spotlights or the Eiffel Tower, as well as natural light from the sun and moon.

Ilse Bing developed a feeling for movement and standstill, which she expressed in the photographs of water as well as of people and objects.

Ilse Bing explains the choice of words in the book's epilogue:.

Ilse Bing introduces her thoughts and poems about numbers as follows:.