Grete Eckert was born in Dresden in 1895. Her father was an amateur photographer and she apprenticed to Grete Back (1878-1965) in Dresden and later to Edmund Wasow in Munich, between 1922 and 1932, after which she set up her own studio with her sister Ottilie specialising in portraiture and advertising. Grete also branched out into industrial and architectural photography like contemporary Hildegard Heise (1897-1979) and was a member of the German Werkbund and GDL from 1935. She partnered with her friend Bauhaus graphic artist and photographer Hilde Horn (1897-1943) during the 30s on many advertising and commercial works for which she was perhaps not credited.
One of her most lyrical images from the 1930s is ‘L’Inconnue de la Seine’, photographs of reproductions of the death mask of a young woman who drowned in the Seine in the 1900s.
Grete’s archive was sadly lost in the war, but we have an original of one of her L’Inconnue de la Seine photographs in the Collection.
By Paula Vellet
