Ilse Bing

Architecture. Constructivist architecture, which emphasised the social aspect of the discipline, was widely recognised outside the Soviet Union thanks to El Lissitsky who promoted the movement abroad. From 1910 onwards the city of Frankfurt became the prototype of modern urban design through the work of the architect Ernst May and the city gradually abandoned its medieval layout in favour of a transformation based on different social requirements. Both Constructivist and Bauhaus theories were extremely influential for Bing’s work. Following her arrival in Paris she focused on one of the city’s most important monuments, the Eiffel Tower, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1889. The Tower had been photographed in 1925 by László Moholy-Nagy, who had an important influence on Bing. Not only, however, did she focus on the beauty of the forms and the abstract beauty of the Tower’s construction but she also captured the area around it by photographing it from inside the tower at different heights.

The same would be the case with New York’s skyscrapers, which she photographed with a distanced and simultaneously critical gaze through the device of including low-rise, humble buildings in the same shot.

Surrealist objects. From an early date Ilse Bing was notably interested in inanimate objects: still lifes, chairs, newspapers, etc, all common motifs in art in the first three decades of the 20^th century. Surrealism brought about a revolution with regard to objects of this type in its addition of a certain indissoluble element of magic and mystery in the compositions. Particularly in her Parisian period, Bing’s depictions of everyday objects are imbued with a degree of almost dream-like melancholy. In contrast, during her time in exile in New York her images reveal a sense of distance and also the appearance of formal and symbolic traits such as the enclosing or delimitation of the depicted scene.

Movement. During the years she lived in Germany Ilse Bing had already focused on the movement of the dancers at the school of Rudolf von Laban, considered the founding father of Expressionist dance. After her arrival in Paris, Bing was commissioned to photograph the waxwork museum of the Moulin Rouge. While undertaking this project she also photographed everyday life on and off stage, particularly the dancers in movement. Bing captured the vibration of the dance with its circular leg movements and the dancers performing the splits in profile. In addition to the series of photographs she took of the dancer Gerard Willem van Loon, one of Bing’s most important projects on the theme of movement centred on the ballet L’Errante, choreographed by George Balanchine and with sets and libretto by the Russian painter Pavel Tchelichew for the Ballets Russes. It was first performed at the prestigious Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in June 1933 and subsequently in London.

A pioneer of photography. Ilse Bing was part of a generation of women photographers who achieved an unprecedented visibility, among them Germaine Krull, Florence Henri, Laure Albin-Guillot, Madame d’Ora, Berenice Abbot (the subject of an exhibition by Fundación MAPFRE in 2019), Nora Dumas and Gisèle Freund. It was not common for women to be artists at this date and this field was largely occupied by men who regarded the presence of women in the social and cultural sectors with disdain, if not overt hostility. Nonetheless, Ilse Bing used her camera as a means to affirm her identity and proclaim her independence.

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