Born: 1887 Bremen, Germany
Died: 1970 London, England
Year of Migration to the UK: 1933
Other name/s: Gertrud Simon, Gertrud Cohn
Biography
Photographer and painter Gerty Simon (née Gertrud Cohn) was born into a Jewish family in Bremen, Germany in 1887. After the First World War, she moved to Berlin, where she taught herself how to use a camera. By 1922 she was working in editorial photography, but soon transitioned into a successful portrait photographer. In her studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg, she photographed major artists, actors, and political figures of the era, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann, Albert Einstein, and the young Judith Kerr, as well as capturing the androgynous image of the ‘new woman’ of Weimar Berlin, with short hair and smoking a cigarette. Her 1929 exhibition in Berlin was praised for the honesty of her portraits and their insight into the essential character of her sitters.
In October 1933, Simon left Nazi Germany for Britain, together with her son, Bernard, writing that: 'Under the Nazi regime, I found myself as a Jew in particular danger, because as a photographer, I had taken numerous photographs of Social Democratic and anti-fascist personalities and exhibited them in public' (David, 2019, p. 37). Another possible reason for her early departure was the relocation of her son's progressive school to Bunce Court, Kent (where many refugee children, including Frank Auerbach, were educated). She swiftly re-established her photographic career in England, settling in Chelsea, where she set up her studio and photographed notable figures of the day, including National Gallery Director Sir Kenneth Clark, artist Sir William Rothenstein, actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft, and Secretary of State, Aneurin Bevan, among others. Her 1934 exhibition 'London Personalities' at Viennese émigrée Ala Story's Storran Gallery in London, was highly praised by critics. The following year, German émigré and art dealer, Alfred Flechtheim, whom she had photographed, c. 1933-34 (Wiener Library), curated a solo exhibition, entitled Gerty Simon: Portraits of Painters, held at the Camera Club, London; a further show, Camera Portraits was held at the Adelphi. With the outbreak of the war, however, Simon ceased taking photographs, possibly because of ill health, and turned to oil painting. Her husband, a former judge, denoted to a notary under the Nazi regime, joined her in England in 1939. Following the introduction of internment for so-called 'enemy aliens' in June 1940, both he, and their son, Bernard, were interned; Bernard was deported to Australia on board the infamous ship, HMT Dunera, and sent to Hay camp, later returning to England in the 1940s.
Gerty Simon died in London, England, in 1970. Upon her death, her 350 large-scale, probably silver gelatin, prints passed into the hands of her son. When he died in 2015, they were inherited by his partner, who, the following year, passed the archive, comprising (slightly mouldy) prints, along with accompanying documentation, to the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. Simon’s glass-plate negatives were unfortunately destroyed. In 2019, as part of the process of rediscovery of forgotten creative refugees, the Wiener Library hosted the exhibition Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon.
Related books
- Carla Mitchell and John March, Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933 (London: Four Corners Gallery, 2020)
- Barbara Warnock and John March, Berlin/London: the Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon (London: Stephen Morris - The Wiener Library, 2020)
- Marina Vaizey, ‘Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon’, The Burlington Magazine, No. 1390, Vol. 161, 2019, pp. 863-866
- John March, 'Women Exile Photographers', Marian Malet, Rachel Dickson, Sarah MacDougall, Anna Nyburg, eds., Applied Arts in British Exile from 1933: Changing Visual and Material Culture (Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019), pp. 128-142
- Keren David, 'Poignant Pictures of a Lost World', Jewish Chronicle, May 2019, 24 May 2019
Public collections
Related web links
- Anna McNay, 'Gerty Simon: Missing Pieces in a Photographic Puzzle', Photomonitor, 2019
- Berlin/London: the Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon, Online Exhibition, The Wiener Library
- Gerty Simon: Metromod
- Gerty Simon’s subjects in London
- John March, ‘The Exiled Photographers Who Aimed their Lenses on Modern Britain’, Jewish Renaissance, 2019
- Marcia G. Yerman, ' Gerty Simon: A Pioneering Photographer Who Reinvented Herself to Survive the Nazis', Next Tribe, 5 July 2022
- Marina Vaizey, ‘Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon’, The Burlington Magazine, 2019
- Mark Brown, 'UK Show Revives Lost Work of Photographer who Fled Nazis', The Guardian, 26 May 2019
- Obituary for Bernard Simon, 2016
- ‘The Lost Photos of Weimar Germany’, BBC World Service, 2019
Selected exhibitions
- Another Eye: Refugee Women Photographers in Britain after 1933 (group show), Four Corners Gallery, London (2020)
- Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon (solo exhibition), Wiener Library, London (2019)
- Camera Portraits (solo exhibition), Adelphi Gallery, London (1935)
- London Personalities (solo exhibition), Storran Gallery, London (1934)
- Gerty Simon: Portraits of Painters, Camera Club, London (1934)
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gerty Simon]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Gerty Simon] in the Ben Uri Library