Yva

Passions

Vocation

German-Jewish photographer renowned for her dreamlike, multiple-exposed images. As one of the first photographers who recognized the commercial potential of photography, she became a leading photographer in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. When the Nazi Party came to power, she was forced into working as a radiographer. She was deported by the Gestapo in 1942 and murdered, probably in the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II. In 1925, Neuländer established her own photographic studio using the professional pseudonym Yva. In 1926, she had a brief collaboration with the painter and photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke, but due to a copyright dispute, they severed their partnership. Her brother, Ernst Neuländer, was a co-owner of the modelling salon Kuhnen and he hired her to shoot his models. She was able to publish ten photographs in Die Dame in 1927, which served as a breakthrough to the top fashion magazines of the day. She embraced the modernist approach using technical composition and avant-garde imagery, both capturing the sexual revolution of the period and emphasizing the female form in ungendered ways, which allowed her flexibility as an artist. Her decision to enter the field was itself a challenge to the accepted norms of the day, which saw men as artists and women as their passive models. By 1927, Yva had become known for specializing in fashion, nudes, and portraiture, but increasingly she recognized the commercial aspects for photography and was one of the first professionals who worked in advertising, contributing her work to magazines, photographic journals and periodicals. In 1934, she married Alfred Simon, who gave up his own career to manage the business aspects of Yva's firm. Yva hired a young assistant, Helmut Neustädter in 1936, who would later become the well-known fashion photographer Helmut Newton. That same year, she Aryanized her firm and transferred ownership to her friend, the art historian Charlotte Weidler, to enable the business to continue operations. Yva made plans to emigrate, after receiving an offer of employment from Life to work in New York City. Her husband convinced her to abandon the plan and remain in Germany, hoping that things would improve. Simon had guessed wrong, as in 1938 Yva was banned from practising photography by a new series of regulations and forced to close her studio. She worked as an assistant in the radiography department of the Jewish Hospital of Berlin until 1942. Else and Alfred Simon were arrested by the Gestapo on 1 June 1942 and on 13 June were sent via "15 Osttransport" to the extermination camps. Alfred Simon was murdered at Majdanek. No record of Yva's death has surfaced. It is probable that both of them were killed upon arrival at a camp, probably in 1942. Else Ernestine Neuländer was officially declared dead on 31 December 1944. In 2002, Yva: Photographies 1925-1938, a biography and evaluation of her work written by Marion Beckers and Elisabeth Moortgat, was published in German and English by Wasmuth Publishing. Link to Wikipedia biography