Marianne Breslauer (20 November 1909 – 7 February 2001) was a German photographer, photojournalist and pioneer of street photography. She belonged to a generation of women photographers who managed to take advantage of the freedom afforded them by the Weimar Republic. Her work is a notable example of the “new photography”.
La Rotonde, Paris, 1930
Breslauer’s brief and promising career as a photographer, unfortunately, was cut short by emigration and exile as she was a Jewish woman living under the National-Socialist regime. Her works, however, were published in many leading magazines until 1934 and now form part of the history of photography.
When asked in an interview what made a good shot, Marianne Breslauer answered at once and without any hesitation, “You know because people don’t walk past it in an exhibition, because people are attracted by a page in a magazine or stop browsing a book. Neither technical perfection nor striking subject matter are decisive; what matters is the power of the image, the expression –the secret of the moment captured–”.
Take a look at Breslauer’s stunning body of work through these 32 beautiful photos:
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