Anneli Bunyard was born in 1913 in Augsburg, Germany; arriving in Britain in 1936 via Paris, she married Claud Bunyard in 1938. In 1942 she opened the Bunyard Ader studio on the Finchley Road with fellow refugee photographer, Inge Ader, where their work included portraits, advertising and fashion photography for magazines. Bunyard specialised in portraits of actors and she also produced colour photographs for a children's book: What a Thread Can Do, which illustrated the process of clothing manufacture.
Photographer Anneli Bunyard was born Anneliese Claire Lerchental in 1913 in Augsburg, Germany, the daughter of banker Robert Lerchenthal and Alice (née Schwartz). She studied at the Maria-Theresia-School from 1924 to 1932 and immigrated via Paris to England in 1936, where she married designer, Claud Bunyard in 1938.
Through the Austrian-Jewish fashion photographer Karl Schenker, Bunyard met Inge Ader, a fellow German-Jewish émigré who had arrived in Britain in 1939. In spring 1942, they opened the Bunyard Ader photographic studio together on Finchley Road, north London, in the area nicknamed ‘Finchleystrasse’ owing to the large influx of German-speaking refugees locally. Their partnership has been described as an important example of ‘working contact between the group of women exile photographers’ then practising in Britain (John March, 2019). Bunyard specialised in portraiture and Ader in advertising and fashion photography, but they signed all their work with the collective signature ‘Bunyard Ader’. Their subsequent commissions, which included creating advertisements and photographic spreads for magazines such as Vogue, Tatler and Harper’s Bazaar, are a testament to both their individual and collaborative photographic skills. Their studio also undertook family, society and professional portraits. They sought to employ fellow émigrés whenever they could and also photographed immigrant actors at the Austrian exile theatre, Das Laterndl, located nearby in Swiss Cottage, and at the Embassy Theatre (another repertory company based locally which also gave work to refugee actors). When the studio rent was increased substantially around 1948–49, however, the business was forced to close. Bunyard also produced colour photographs for an educational children's book entitled What a Thread Can Do, which illustrated the process of manufacturing clothes.
Bunyard died in a traffic accident in Rome in Italy in 1949, leaving a young son, Peter, who was brought up by friends, and who is now a noted ecologist. Bunyard’s photographs were included in the exhibition Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933 held at the Four Corners Gallery, London in 2020, at a time when the work of a number of previously neglected female émigré practitioners was being rediscovered.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anneli Bunyard]
Publications related to [Anneli Bunyard] in the Ben Uri Library