Man with Dog, by Geiringer and Horovitz, Hundred Heroines Collection
Atelier Geiringer and Horovitz
1925-1934
Viennese photographers
Trude Neumann Geiringer (1890-1981) and Dora Horovitz (1897-1978) were born into Jewish families in Vienna and Galatia, respectively, and were among the groundbreaking Jewish female photographers to define the style of Weimar Vienna.
After graduating from the Schwarzwaldschule in Vienna, Trude studied photography and established herself as a portraitist of actors, dancers and authors.
Dora graduated from the Graphische Versuchs- und Lehranstalt and then worked at Franz Xaver Setzer’s studio in Vienna, before joining Trude in 1925 to be responsible for the printing and management at their popular portrait studio Atelier Geiringer und Horovitz at Stubenring 2 in Vienna until 1934.
There, they photographed the celebrities of the day, including actresses such as Elizabeth Berger (1928), Maria Bard (1927) and Fatma Karell (1928) and captured beautiful studies of dancers, often experimenting with nudes.
Their work was regularly published in popular Weimar fashion and celebrity magazines such as Die Bühne, Fur Die Frau, Uhu, Die Dame and Moderne Welt throughout the 20s and 30s, along with the work of many Jewish German, Czech and Austrian female photographers such as Edith Barakovich (1896-1940), Madame D’Ora/Dora Kallmus (1881-1963), Yva (1900-1944), Pepa Feldscharek (1899-1962,) Trude Fleischmann (1885-1990), Edith Glogau (1898-1970), Marianne Breslauer (1909-2001) and Kitty Hoffmann (1900-1968). This was possibly due to the rise of the modern woman and the patronage of the Ullstein fashion editor Johanna Thal (1886–1944) who wrote for Die Dame until 1933 and was killed in Auschwitz.
With the rise of National Socialism, Trude and Dora were forced out of business and into exile. Trude left the studio in 1933 and fled with her family to the USA in 1938, where she worked at the Apeda Studio in New York before briefly running the Photo Trude Geiringer Studio until 1945. Her portrait of Austrian novelist and husband of Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, was taken in 1940 in New Rochelle.
Dora continued to run the Vienna studio but escaped to California in 1939, where she managed her brother’s Harvey Studio until her death in 1978.
Vintage Prints and a scrapbook of Trude’s work is held in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Some of Dora’s work is held at the Getty Museum.
By Paula Vellett
We have a number of items in the Collection by Geiringer and Horovitz, including this stunning portrait of Aubrey Hitchins.
Useful links to see more of their work
