Ilse Bing: Queen of the Leica
Ilse Bing, 'Self-portrait', 1931. Museum no. E.3027-2004, © Estate of Ilse Bing Wolff
Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading women photographers in the inter-war period. Her rapid success and early and exclusive use of the Leica camera soon earned her the title 'Queen of the Leica' from the critic and photographer Emmanuel Sougez.
The photographs on show were mainly taken at the height of Bing's career. The display included examples of her early work in Frankfurt as well as some of her finest pieces from the 1930s. Selected from a group of about 50 photographs bequeathed to the V&A by the artist, they comprised both vintage prints and work made in the 1980s and 1990s in response to a revival of interest in Bing's work.
Slices of a modern world
Ilse Bing initially taught herself photography to illustrate her research into Neo-classical architecture. In 1929 she bought a Leica camera and started to photograph new buildings in and around Frankfurt. The architect Mart Stam commissioned her to record several of his ambitious projects, including the Hellerhof housing development pictured here. Dizzy angles, flat plains and strong shadows were all part of a contemporary language of design pioneered by both the 'New Photography' and the new architecture.
In this group of photographs, objects, bodies and buildings - old and new - are seen through this modernist filter of steep perspectives, off-centre compositions and closely cropped details.
Portraits
As a freelance photographer, Bing applied elements of her oblique, sober, experimental style to commercial photography. Her practice included photojournalism, architectural and theatrical photography, advertising, fashion and portraiture.
In these portraits from the mid 1930s, Bing represents the human figure with a characteristic concentration on photographic form. The face of American writer Jerome Mellquist is framed by cast shadows, while the portrait of Jimmy van Loon concentrates on the textures of the sitter's hair and embossed leather jacket. Bing's severe self-presentation of 1934 shows an independent, unadorned, determined professional. In 1945, revisiting her earlier, minimal self-portraits, Bing maintained this uncompromising self-scrutiny.
Paris
Bing's modernist vision was not restricted just to clean planes and geometrical structures. Paris presented a complex urban scene that was modern yet also worn and weathered. As with contemporary Surrealist townscapes, the past broke through. The modernisation of the urban fabric cast light on the battered remains of an older place - the exhausted pomp of the Père Lachaise cemetery, or dark apartment blocks reflected in gutters. Her best images of Paris are informed by a chaotic layering of signs of disregarded culture, like the wasted potted plants in her study of a pavement or the abject torn posters on a wooden fence.
![Ilse Bing, [Untitled, plants in a gutter], 1953, Vintage gelatin-silver print, Bequest of Ilse Bing Wolff, Museum no. E.3026-2004](http://www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0016/214027/8946-large.jpg)
New York
In these scenes of New York, made during her visit in 1936, Bing resolves her interest in modernist design and the comedies of urban randomness. Her skills as a photojournalist are evident in the card school and other sidewalk scenes. This populist subject matter, linked to realism in contemporary American art, is combined with views of soaring skyscrapers, also much photographed at the time.
Bing's distinctive response to New York is evident in her photograph of Central Park. Experienced in photographing dance and performance, she captures the lyrical grace of the striding male figure. In this melancholic urban ballet, Bing flexes her Leica to freeze a moment of counterpoise.
Written to accompany the exhibition Ilse Bing: Queen of the Leica
![Ilse Bing, [Barber College]](http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/sites/default/files/album_images/8953-small.jpg)
![Ilse BIng, [Rockefeller Center or Daily Mirror and Chrysler Building tops]](http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/sites/default/files/album_images/8955-small.jpg)
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