Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1908 Kiev, Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine)

Died: 2004 Cambridge, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Other name/s: Laelia Rivlin

Biography

Photographer Laelia Goehr (née Rivlin) was born into an established Jewish family in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine) in 1908. She showed talent as a pianist from an early age and as a child attended the conservatoire in Kiev. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution Jewish communities and synagogues were dissolved and under this intensifying pressure, her family immigrated to Berlin, Germany in 1921. In Berlin, she continued her musical studies at the Hochschule fűr Musik and attended a boarding school, where she befriended fellow student Rosa Goldstein. Together they experimented with American popular music and improvisation and formed the highly successful jazz cabaret duo, The Stone Sisters. In 1930 Laelia met the conductor Walter Goehr at a party hosted by Hollywood filmmaker Billy Wilder and they married the following year.

Following Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship in 1933 and the introduction of increasingly anti-Semitic legislation, Walter’s work for Berlin radio and other outlets was withdrawn. He was offered the post of musical director of the Gramophone Company (later EMI) in London which gave the Goehrs the opportunity to immigrate to England in 1933 with their young son, Alexander. In London, Goehr studied photography and during the war was employed as a part of an organised war effort to take family photographs to send to soldiers. During this period she met the acclaimed German-born photographer Bill Brandt, with whom she began to study. Brandt’s innovative documentary style, which focused on candid images at all levels of British society, deeply influenced Goehr’s style, especially that of her street photography. She took many portraits of Brandt including the notable Bill Brandt with his Kodak Wideangle Camera. Through Brandt, she gained introductions to various magazine editors and her work was featured in Lilliput, the humorous monthly magazine founded by the Hungarian émigré photojournalist Stefan Lorant; the anti-Fascist Picture Post, which campaigned against the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany; in the left-wing newspaper, The Observer; and The Jewish Chronicle. She worked from her own studio in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where she was able to develop and print her photographs. In 1951 Laelia traveled to the newly-formed state of Israel, where she was commissioned to photograph political leaders and intellectuals including Israeli cabinet ministers and philosopher Martin Buber and the Jewish Yemini community. These photographs, which included her own documentary street photography, formed the basis of an exhibition in 1952 of photographs at Ben Uri Gallery, in conjunction with the Jewish Chronicle. She subsequently moved away from news photography in order to focus on subjects of particular interest including musicians, plants, nudes, and cats and dogs. She published three books: Faces: Profiles of Dogs (1961) with Vita Sackville-West, Musicians in Camera (1987) with John Amis, and Suki, A Little Tiger (1964) with Elspeth Huxley.

Laelia Goehr died in Cambridge, England in 2004, survived by her son Alexander Goehr the notable composer and academic. Her work is represented in UK collections including the NPG and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She also featured posthumously in the exhibition Another Eye: Refugee Women Photographers in Britain since 1933 at Four Corners Gallery, London in 2020.

Related books

Rachel Dickson, 'Almost as impressive as its legacy in the visual arts': Ben Uri Art Society and Music in Exile 1931-1960' in Malcolm Miller and Jutta Raab Hansen, eds., The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Volume 22 (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2022)
Carla Mitchell and John March, Another Eye: Refugee Women Photographers in Britain since 1933 (London: Four Corners Gallery, 2020)
John Amis and Laelia Goehr, Musicians in Camera (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1987)
Elsbeth Huxley and Laelia Goehr, Suki, A Little Tiger (London: William Morrow, 1964)
Vita Sackville-West and Laelia Goehr, Faces: Profiles of Dogs (London: Daunt Books, 1961)
Ben Uri Exhibition of Photography ‘Laelia Goehr’s Work: A Critical Appreciation’. <em>The Jewish Chronicle</em> (16 May 1952), p. 8.

Public collections

Related organisations

Lilliput (photographer)
The Observer (photographer)
Picture Post (photographer)

Selected exhibitions

Another Eye: Refugee Women Photographers in Britain since 1933, Four Corners Gallery (2020)
Stravinsky Rehearses Stravinsky, Victoria and Albert Museum (1982)
Exhibition of photographs by Laelia Goehr, Ben Uri Gallery (1952)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Laelia Goehr]