Lotte Jacobi

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Lotte Johanna Alexandra Jacobi (August 17, 1896 – May 6, 1990) was a German photographer, who immigrated to the United States to escape Nazi Germany.

Born in Prussia (now Toruń, Poland), she spent parts of her life in Berlin (1925-1935), New York City (1935-1955), and New Hampshire (1955-1990). She photographed such people as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Robert Frost, Marc Chagall, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alfred Stieglitz, J.D. Salinger, Paul Robeson, May Sarton, Pauline Koner, Bernice Abbott and Edward Steichen.

After completing her formal studies (1925 – 1927), Jacobi entered the family photography business in 1927. During this same period (1926-27) she began her professional work as a photographer, and she also produced four films, the most important being Portrait of the Artist, a study of Josef Scharl. From October of 1932 to January of 1933, Lotte traveled to the Soviet Union, in particular to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, taking photographs of what she saw. She returned to Berlin in February 1933, one month after Hitler came to power. As persecution against Jews increased, Lotte left Germany with her son, arriving in September 1935 in New York City, where she opened a studio in Manhattan.

In 1940, Lotte married Erich Reiss, a distinguished German publisher and writer, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1951. During this time, she continued portrait photography at her studio, while also embarking upon an experimental type of photographic work that artist Leo Katz later named photogenics. They refer to the abstract black-and-white images that she produced by moving torches and candles over light-sensitive paper. In 1955, Lotte left New York with her son and daughter-in-law and moved to Deering, New Hampshire, a move that changed her life. There she opened a new studio.

Lotte Jacobi is best known for her photographic portraits, which act as a "chronicle of an era." The list of her subjects reads like a who's who of the 20th century: W. H. Auden, Martin Buber, Marc Chagall, W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Käthe Kollwitz, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Thomas Mann, Max Planck, Eleanor Roosevelt, J.D. Salinger, Alfred Stieglitz, and Chaim Weizmann, to name but a few. Jacobi traveled around from assignment to assignment with her equipment bringing the studio to her models. She liked to wait until the models were most at ease before taking a photograph.