The latest Four Corners exhibition, 'Another Eye', which was planning to run until 2 May, celebrates the lives and work of the two dozen women photographers who sought refuge in Britain from Nazi Europe after 1933. (See below for the latest information on the exhibition). The scope of the exhibition is broad, and tells a series of interlocking stories. The historical backcloth is how Germany and Austria were at the forefront of photography in the 1920s and 1930s, and how photographs were used for mass communication. Alongside this the exhibition tells the stories of forced exile and how these highly skilled women photographers escaped and re-established themselves in Britain. The exhibition also shows the very diverse range of work that the women were involved in once in Britain – portraits, fashion, social documentary, book illustrations, educational photographs of artworks and adverts.
One intriguing aspect of the impact made that by these women photographers was the way in which, as outsiders, they managed to capture features of British life, work and rituals, and through their photographs, showed Britain back to the British public in new and fresh ways.
The origins of this very British story begin elsewhere; mainly in Berlin and Vienna where the majority of the refugees came from. It was there, especially after the First World War, where photography developed rapidly, along with the opportunity for a career working in it. New portable cameras, such as the Leica, capable of “candid” and “street photography” since they could be used spontaneously and go close up to the subject, came onto the market in the mid-1920s. Training institutions such as the Bauhaus, the (women-only) Lette Verein in Berlin, and the Graphical Research and Teaching Institute in Vienna, all offered advanced photography courses and training. Meanwhile the illustrated press boomed as an industry, with a wide range of local and national magazines, together with illustrated pull-out sections in local and national daily newspapers. As well as very positive factors which were propelling German and Austrian photography forward, modernist perspectives that were being projected in architecture, design and the arts found their way to photography. These fresh approaches to making photographs, and experimenting with how they could be used, later made their way to Britain with the emigrés.
