Ilse Bing

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Ilse Bing (23 March 1899 – 10 March 1998) was a German photographer who produced pioneering avant-garde and commercial monochrome images during the inter-war era.

Her move from Frankfurt to Paris in 1930 and its burgeoning avant-garde and surrealist scene was the start of this notable period of her career. Producing images in the fields of photojournalism, architectural photography, advertising and fashion, her work was published in magazines such as Le Monde Illustre, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue. Respected for her use daring perspectives and cropping, use of natural light and geometries, she also discovered a type of solarisation for negatives independently of a similar process developed by the artist Man Ray.

Her rapid success as a photographer and her position of being the only professional in Paris to use an advanced Leica camera earned her the title "Queen of the Leica" from the critic and photographer Emmanuel Sougez.

In 1936 her work was included in the first modern photography exhibition held at the Louvre, and in 1937 she travelled to New York where her images were included in the landmark exhibition "Photography 1839–1937" at the Museum of Modern Art.