| Ylla | |
|---|---|
Ylla with toucan, ca. 1950 |
|
| Birth name | Camilla Koffler |
| Born | August , 1911 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | March , 1955 |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Field | Photography |
| Training | Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, Académie Colarossi |
| Movement | Nature, Animals |
| Influenced by | Ergy Landau |
Ylla (pronounced "eela") was the pseudonym of Camilla Koffler (16 August 1911–30 March 1955), a Hungarian photographer who specialized in animal photography. At the time of her death she "was generally considered the most proficient animal photographer in the world." [1]
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Koffler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Romanian father and Serb mother, both Hungarian nationals. At age eight, she was placed in a German boarding school in Budapest, Hungary. In 1925, the teenage Koffler joined her mother in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she studied sculpture with Italian sculptor Petar Palavacini at the Academy of Fine Arts; discovering that her given name Camilla stood for "camel" in Serb,[2] she changed it to "Ylla."
In 1929, Ylla received a commission for a bas-relief sculpture for a Belgrade movie theater. By 1931, she had moved to Paris, France, where she studied sculpture at the Académie Colarossi and worked as photo retoucher and assistant to photographer Ergy Landau.
In 1932, Ylla began photographing animals, exhibited her work at Galerie de La Pléiade, and opened a studio to photograph pets. In 1933, she was introduced to Charles Rado of the Rapho Guillumette agency.
In 1940, New York's Museum of Modern Art submitted her name to the U.S. Department of State requesting an entry visa; she immigrated to the United States in 1941.
In 1952, Ylla traveled to Africa, and in 1954 she visited India for the first time.
In 1955, Ylla was fatally injured after falling from a jeep while photographing a bullock cart race during festivities in Bharatpur, North India.
| “ | . . . She is, I think, the outstanding animal photographer. She is outstanding in being able to seize in her pictures some essential quality of her subjects, which more orthodox photographers are apt to miss in their desire for so-called realistic and complete representation.[3] | ” |
Charles Rado:
| “ | [Ylla was] one of the most skilled and dedicated photographers of animals. They were her life, she loved them all. . . . She was wonderfully alive, amusing, fond of travel and people, and she loved her work because she loved and understood animals. Her books, in particular, gave her much satisfaction. She worked on them with infinite patience, supervising their design and printing. Animals (1951) won a prize as one of the most beautiful books of the year. . . . She contributed to practically every illustrated magazine here and in Europe. . . . The thrill of observing and photographing wild animals in their natural habitat was a new and exciting experience to Ylla; she would never again be content with photographing zoo animals.[4] | ” |