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Photogenic

Artist/Maker (German, 1896–1990)
Date1945–56
MediumToned gelatin silver print
DimensionsOverall: 7 13/16 × 9 13/16 in. (19.8 × 24.9 cm)
Credit LineHorace W. Goldsmith Foundation Photography Fund
Object number1993.11
Status
On view
Copyright© Lotte Jacobi Collection, University of New HampshireMore Information
Jacobi was born to a long line of photographers; her great-grandfather studied with Louis Daguerre, who established the daguerreotype in 1939, one of the first widely used photographic processes. Jacobi took her first photograph at the age of 12 with a pinhole camera and managed her father’s studio in Berlin from 1927 until 1935. In Berlin, she was a celebrated portraitist of artists and celebrities.

Due to her leftist politics and Jewish heritage, she fled Nazi Germany and established a studio in New York City, where she was active from 1935 until 1955. This work comes from a body of abstract photography begun in the 1950s, which Jacobi referred to as “photogenics.” She produced these cameraless photographs by arranging glass, cellophane, and other transparent materials over a sheet of photographic paper while shining a flashlight at it.
Exhibition History
The Thingness of Things: Portraits of Objects
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 5, 2019 - May 26, 2019 )
Femme 'n isms, Part II: Flashpoints in Photography
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 2, 2024 - January 18, 2025 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary
  • On View