FEATURE twenty of which were ultimately published. Despite her fame, being Jewish, Yva increasingly came under the diktats of the Nazi party and was forced to permanently close her studio in 1938. Although she had intended to emigrate, she and her husband stayed in Berlin. In 1942, they were arrested and transported to Majdanek, where they ultimately perished. During her career, Yva was at the cutting edge of fashion and advertising photography, having developed a unique multiple-exposure technique in which she exposed individual plates six or seven times, creating ethereal imagery. She utilized this to tremendous effect in her commercial work and in the work that she showed in local galleries and international exhibitions. She began to define the way the female form was used to show fashion and wearable objects in commercial photography, creating a moody, sexually charged visual identity. With a mixture of lighting, soft focus, and gesture, Yva perfected a visual language that combined her particular artistry with the needs of commercial functionality. Her ability to create moods and atmospheres connecting the seductive imagery to the viewer placed her decades ahead of the broader movement in fashion and advertising photography that flowered in the 1960s. All these facets of her work are displayed in Frau mit Schmuck der Sudsee (Woman with South Seas Art) in 1930,9 a series of photos in which a sensuous female model is posed wearing different items of Oceanic jewelry. Her artistry is even more remarkable in the total abandon she expressed with a portrait of a female nude wearing a New Britain overmodeled skull mask. Here, a recumbent woman is lying with her arm draped over her head, succumbing and in obeisance to the power of the severe mask (fig. 1). Her wrists are FIG. 6 (left): Emil Nolde (1867–1956), Stilleben H, 1915. Cat. Rais. Urban 638. © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll. FIG. 7 (below): Emil Nolde’s paintings and New Ireland sculptures. Museum Folkwang, Germany, 1921. FIG. 8 (right): Emile Nolde’s New Ireland collection, Seebüll. © Nolde Stiftung, Seebüll. ing world increased such that she expanded her studio to ten employees, including a young Helmut Newton, who apprenticed with her for two years. In 1930, Friedrich Kroner, the editor of Ullstein-Verlag, asked artist Christian Schad to paint a double portrait for the cover of his magazine, Uhu.8 Although Schad normally worked from his own photographic imagery, he instead chose to use a photo of two girls taken by Yva and painted the iconic Freudinnen (Friends) in 1930. Yva continued to work for Uhu magazine and produced twenty-seven photo stories,
XVII-4 Cover FR final_Cover
To see the actual publication please follow the link above