1. Lotte Jacobi was a leading American portrait photographer and photojournalist, known for her high-contrast black-and-white portrait photography, characterized by intimate, sometimes dramatic, sometimes idiosyncratic and often definitive humanist depictions of both ordinary people in the United States and Europe and some of the most important artists, thinkers and activists of the 20th century.
Lotte Jacobi made a point of photographing subjects in their own environments, and talking to them while she worked.
Lotte Jacobi explained the reasoning behind her approach this way:.
In 1921, Posen became part of Poland, and Lotte Jacobi relocated to Munich.
Lotte Jacobi divorced her husband in 1924 and, in 1927, she entered the family photography business.
Lotte Jacobi returned to Berlin in February 1933, a month after Hitler came to power.
In 1955, Lotte Jacobi left New York with her son and daughter-in-law, and moved to Deering, New Hampshire, a move that changed her life.
Lotte Jacobi became interested in politics and was a fervent Democrat, representing New Hampshire at the Democratic National Convention in 1980.
Lotte Jacobi traveled extensively and enjoyed new-found fame in the 1970s and 1980s.
Lotte Jacobi bequeathed 47,000 negatives to the Lotte Jacobi Archives established at the University of New Hampshire.
Lotte Jacobi's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.
Lotte Jacobi studied literature and art history at the Royal Academy in Poznan from 1912 to 1917, and completed her formal artistic training at the Bavarian State Academy of Photography and the University of Munich from 1925 to 1927.