Ellen Auerbach

Auerbach (born Ellen Rosenberg) was born May 20, 1906, in Karlsruhe, Germany. She was born to a liberal Jewish family, and was the daughter of Max Rosenberg and Melanie Gutmann. Her father was a successful businessman while her mother looked after the family. Rosenberg took no interest in the family business, so her parents allowed her to study, but provided little financial support or encouragement. Between 1924 and 1927, Auerbach studied art at the Badische Landeskunstschule in Karlsruhe. This first experience led her to pursue photography as a way of earning a living. Studying photography In 1929 Rosenberg moved to Berlin to study photography with Walter Peterhans, who was a member of the Bauhaus design movement. Whilst studying under Peterhans, Rosenberg met Grete Stern, Peterhans' only other private student. Berlin's liberal environment allowed women to live free social and sexual lives, and Rosenberg was able to break away from her family's traditional expectations. He also encouraged her to pursue photography throughout her life. == Career ==

In 1930 Rosenberg and Stern bought Peterhans´ studio and equipment, and founded their own photography and design studio specialising in advertising, fashion and portrait photography. This was one of the world's first female-run photographic businesses. They named the studio after their childhood names, ringl+pit (pit for Rosenberg), which also advantageously disguised their genders Unusually, they signed all of their work together. At first they received few commissions. They photographed friends and lovers they met through bohemian circles, including the dancer Claire Eckstein and the poet Marieluise Fleisser. In 1931 ringl+pit's work received positive reviews in the magazine Gebrauchsgraphik and in 1933 they won first prize for one of their posters in Brussels. In 1936 the Abyssinian war broke out, and Walter Auerbach and Rosenberg left for London to visit Stern. Stern and Rosenberg collaborated once again in a few commissions, including one for a maternity hospital, their final work together. During her time in London Rosenberg made a short film of Brecht, reciting his poetry; however, the film was silent. where she worked freelance for magazines, including Time, Life and Photo Technique. She also made record covers for Columbia Masterworks. The Auerbachs ended their marriage in 1945 although they remained friends. Between 1946 and 1949 Ellen Auerbach worked with Dr. Sybil Escalona, a child psychologist, at the Menninger psychiatric institute in Kansas. There she photographed and made two films on young children's behaviour. In the early 1950s Auerbach taught photography at the Junior College for Arts and Crafts in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1955 Auerbach joined nature photographer, Eliot Porter, on a trip to Mexico to photograph churches. Photographs were taken with natural light, which was unusual at this time. This work did not receive recognition at the time, but were published in two books many years later. This trip was her last professional photography project. At the age of sixty Auerbach embarked on a new career, providing educational therapy for children with learning disabilities at the Educational Institute for Learning and Research in New York. == Later life ==

Auerbach continued to create photographs non-commercially throughout her later life, as a creative outlet for her thoughts and impressions. She traveled extensively between the 1940s and 1960s, photographing landscapes and nature, as well as interiors, architecture, street scenes and portraits. In 1990, at the age of 84, she lectured at the Art Institute and the Goethe Institute in Chicago about photographic technique and her life as a photographer. Auerbach died July 30, 2004, in New York City. == Rediscovery ==

In the 1980s the work of ringl+pit and Auerbach began to be exhibited by German museums. In 1996, a documentary about her partnership with Grete Stern, Ringl + pit, won a number of awards. Very few of ringl+pit's photographs survive today; most those still in existence are held by museums and collectors. == Family ==

Auerbach had an older brother who died when he was a child and a brother Walter who was 12 years younger. In 1936 Walter Rosenberg secured a visa for Argentina and sailed there to live with Stern, who was then married to Horacio Coppola. During the war the Rosenbergs' parents stayed in Karlsruhe. In October 1940, they were deported by the Nazis to the Gurs concentration camp in France along with 6,500 Jews from the Baden-Württemberg region. They returned to Karlsruhe after the war. ==References==