Never heard of her. Her? Right? Yes, her. Ergy Landau was an Hungarian-French Humanist photographer, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1896 (Is humanist what they call female photogs, I wonder? But, but wouldn’t all photogs who take photos of humans be ‘humanists’, then? hmm…my feminist hackles are feeling a slight and very common twinge).
Landau completed a photographic apprenticeship in Budapest, studied in Vienna and later in Berlin. She first exhibited her work in Budapest in 1921, and moved to Paris in 1922 or ’23, where she opened a studio and mingled with fellow leftist intellectuals and feminists. Very little is known about Landau’s life during the war, and I can find little information about her personal life, but she traveled extensively, journeying to and taking photographs in Mongolia (!!).
Landau was one of a handful of women photographers who, in the years between the World Wars, gained recognition from the public as well as from a professional milieu whose majority was still male. She opened a Parisian studio in 1924 and became known through her portraits of the contemporary intelligentsia, portraits that are widely circulated in the press. Her style is still characterized by a pictorialism (Portrait de Paul Valéry, below) from which she quickly turns away to espouse the principles of the New Vision: attraction to forms, objects and materials, sharpness of the image, solidity of the constructions, artificial light sculpting the forms, partial framings, daring shot angles.
Landau worked with a Rolleiflex – and was the first to use this brand and type of camera in Paris, whose framing demands close-up shots. Her early period was influenced by Pictorialism before she turned towards the Nouvelle Vision (New vision) at the end of the 1920s. Her advertising photographs and her images of the city (1920–1930) brought her great success. A specialist in photos and portraits of children, Landau also illustrated several books on the subject.
Ergy Landau died in Paris in 1967.
