Irmgard Koppel was born to Jewish parents in Hamburg, Germany in 1914. Immigrating to England in 1934, Koppel briefly lived and worked in London as a photographer at the British Museum and the Warburg Institute, University of London, where she was primarily tasked with documenting bookplates and medieval manuscripts. In 1937, Koppel emigrated from London to Wellington, New Zealand, where she worked as a photographer until the 1960s.
Photographer Irmgard Koppel was born to Jewish parents (her father was a doctor and her mother, a painter) in Hamburg, Germany in 1914. After leaving school, Koppel trained locally in the studios of two professional women photographers, one of whom was Elsbeth Köster (1894-1974, https://sammlungonline.mkg-hamburg.de/). When Hitler acceded to the Chancellorship in March 1933, English Quaker friends sponsored Koppel to immigrate to England, where she arrived in 1934 on a domestic service visa (the most common method for refugee women to gain entry to Britain in this period). Settling in London, Koppel worked as a photographer at the British Museum and at the Warburg Institute, University of London, where she was primarily tasked with documenting bookplates and medieval manuscripts. The Warburg Institute was originally established in Hamburg by eminent art historian Aby Warburg, and with the rise of Nazism, the director, Fritz Saxl, relocated the library, collections and staff to London in 1933. Koppel was one of many highly skilled German(-Jewish) refugees employed by the Warburg during the 1930s and 1940s (who also included Koppel’s mother, Katharina, when she joined her daughter in London). In addition to employment, Koppel received further photographic training from the Warburg's chief photographer and bookbinder, fellow émigré, Otto Fein (1906-1966). The portrait which Koppel took of Fein around 1934, at a vertiginous angle and closely cropped, demonstrates the modernist influence that 'New Vision' photography, transmitted from continental Europe, had on her work at this time. In her spare time, Koppel explored the streets of London, taking photographs of people she encountered at various locations, including Hampstead Heath, Caledonian Market and Trafalgar Square. Koppel further developed her skills as a street photographer in Naples, Capri and Sicily, during a trip to Italy in 1935.
Through contacts at the Warburg, in January 1937 Koppel arrived in Wellington, New Zealand, on a visa sponsored by Lawrence Nathan, from a prominent Auckland Jewish family. The Warburg’s assistant director, Gertrud Bing, had advised Koppel about job opportunities in New Zealand and facilitated contact with Nathan; in one of her references, Bing wrote that ‘we have found [Koppel] not only very well trained, but also decidedly gifted for her profession’ (Bell, 2017). In Wellington, Koppel photographed the Nathans’ collection of Chinese ceramics, the only surviving documentation of a collection that was later dispersed (Bell, 2017). She also worked briefly at Kodak and, between 1938 and 1939, at the studio of Spencer Digby, the leading commercial photographer in Wellington. Many of the photographs that she took for New Zealand periodicals such as Freelance, Weekly News and NZ Truth at this time were in fact credited to Digby. In 1939, Koppel was joined in Wellington by her mother, who was able to teach art, and who was naturalised in 1946 (New Zealand Gazette). In 1939 Koppel worked at the studio of a Mr. Blake before opening her own studio at 351a The Terrace, Wellington in 1941, under the name Irene Koppel. in 1939-40, Koppel travelled with New Zealand journalist (Horace) Leslie Verry to Europe where he reported and she photographed aspects of the continent on the brink of war; an album in the National Library of New Zealand includes Koppel's images of troop mobilisation in Holland and photographs taken in Kassa (Hungary) after the partition of Czechoslovakia. In 1943, Koppel married Verry, who subsequently became a prominent member of the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA).
As a portrait photographer, Koppel photographed many fellow refugees and their children, members of Wellington’s Jewish community, and American servicemen (Bell, 2017). Among her most interesting subjects was Marcus Gotlieb who, as a leader of the New Zealand Zionist Federation in Wellington, gave assistance to many refugees from Nazism (Bell, 2017). As one of the first professional photographers in the country to work with a Leica camera, Koppel also made an important contribution to the development of photojournalism in New Zealand. When the English playwright and actor Noel Coward visited Wellington in 1941, Koppel documented the reception held in his honour at the Travel Club. Overall, the work that Koppel produced in New Zealand was far more conventional than that which she had produced in Germany, England, and Italy; nevertheless, the influence of the New Vision movement can still be sensed in the photographs that she took between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s of modernist buildings in New Zealand, designed by architects such as Viennese émigré, Ernst Plischke, Ernst Gerson (from Hamburg), and Gordon Wilson. Koppel gave up her career in the 1960s following the birth of her two children and her photographs were gradually forgotten. Koppel died in Wellington in 2004. Her archives of over 3000 photographic images are held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, part of the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Irmgard Koppel]
Publications related to [Irmgard Koppel] in the Ben Uri Library