Who is hiding behind Madame d’Ora’s lens? The exhibition currently being held at the Pavillon Populaire, in Montpellier, invites us, through a sober chronological and thematic journey, to follow fifty years of the artistic career of this outstanding portraitist, pioneer of fashion photography, from her beginnings in the spring of the Viennese Secession to the post-war Parisian winter.
It was while vacationing on the Côte d’Azur that the young girl, from a Viennese Jewish middle-class family, discovered photography and decided to make it her profession. Upon her return to Austria, Dora Kallmuss entered the studio of photographer Hans Makart as a trainee, followed courses at the Institute of Graphic Arts in Vienna. Then, she left for Berlin to perfect her art of portraiture with the German photographer Nicola Perscheid before opening her own studio in 1907, under the name of Madame d’Ora.
Success is there, the scene of Viennese modernity crowds in front of his lens: Gustav Klimt, Arthur Schnitzler, Alma Mahler, Anna Pavlova… soon followed by politicians and industrialists up to the aristocracy and the imperial family. . His mastery of the portrait was able to open the doors to the highest spheres of society where contempt for the Jewish bourgeoisie was in order.
Photos of Josephine Baker will contribute to her glamorous image
The refined play of lights, the sobriety of the decor, the enhancement of the subject with blurred backgrounds, the naturalness of the poses and expressions, the climate of trust that she knows how to establish with her models and the virtuosity of the imperceptible retouching make him famous and open the pages of magazines to him. Period prints from the Austrian, German and French collections allow visitors to fully appreciate the quality and sensuality of these sepias or velvety black and white.
From 1910, fashion drawings disappeared from the pages of magazines to make way for photographs: Dora Kallmuss specialized in the genre, having her models pose as actresses or dancers with the clothes of the most prominent designers. His imaginative shots were published first in German-speaking magazines and then internationally such as Vogue or The Official for which she will work for fifteen years.
D’Ora, Hat by Krieser, 1910, Private Collection / Private Collection
This collaboration opened the doors to All-Paris where she settled permanently in 1925: Madame d’Ora worked with Elsa Schiaparelli, took portraits of Tamara de Lempicka, Foujita, Coco Chanel and the Dolly Sisters. She goes to meet Josephine Baker: her photographs will contribute to the glamorous and exotic image of the American artist.
These are years of intense work that we keep track of thanks to the presence of his photos in the press agencies and the printed publications presented here, many of his archives having disappeared during the Second World War.
Ghostly portrait of Maurice Chevalier
After Hitler came to power, Jewish photographers gradually disappeared from publications. The year 1940 will see the last publication signed Madame d’Ora followed by the forced sale of her studio. This dark period is reflected in his photographs, free for the first time from any commercial constraints. She tries a lighter and more manageable camera, abandons flattering lighting and produces twilight portraits like the ghostly one of Maurice Chevalier, the beginnings of her work after 1945.
Like many Jews from assimilated families, Dora, who had converted to Catholicism in 1919, did not take the full measure of the danger, she only fled Paris in disaster after the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup to find refuge in a village. Ardèche where she hides for three years.
D’Ora, Dances in refugee camps 1946-1948. / Hamburg, Museum of Art and Trade
The war over, alone and destitute, Dora Kalmuss at almost 65 years old must reinvent herself in a Europe in ashes. She returns to Vienna to photograph the ruins of past splendor, enters the refugee camps of Salzburg where she goes to meet the most vulnerable. She chooses to turn her lens towards single mothers, children, the elderly, the disabled. In his serious and dignified portraits, the subjects are at the edge of the frame, as if ready to step aside a little more.
« How long will we have to remain rabbits, chickens, fish? »
Back in Paris, she accepts commissions for portraits of high society that she will photograph in their environment. She begins an astonishing collaboration with the Marquis de Cuevas, his famous ballets and his sumptuous and decadent parties which will attract the ire of the Communists and the Vatican in 1953.
But his images no longer have anything to do with the glamorous and seductive pre-war ones. If these portraits depict the exuberance of George de Cuevas, they nonetheless reveal his fragility as an aging sick man. She does not hesitate to have him pose as lying on his deathbed, surrounded by skinned sheep’s heads. This gloomy and enigmatic portrait echoes his last personal series. “My great final work”as she called it, that the photographer started around 1950 in the Parisian slaughterhouses where she went regularly until 1957.
Far from a documentary work, she sets her lens on animal carcasses, skinned rabbits, severed calf’s heads, staging them in an aesthetic and surreal way. As the curator of the exhibition, Magdalena Vukovic, observes, it is difficult to determine the message of this testamentary work, but it resonates strangely with her words scribbled during her exile in Ardèche: “How long will we have to remain rabbits, chickens, fish? »
From glamor to war, his work will have made a great aesthetic difference, as Jean Cocteau will underline in 1958, during the inauguration speech of the last exhibition devoted to Madame d’Ora in France, on which this journey of a life dedicated to photography.
——-
Landmarks
1881. Born in Vienna in a family of the Jewish bourgeoisie, his father Philippe Kallmus is a lawyer
1905. Member of the Vienna Photographic Society
1907. Opening of the Ora workshop in Vienna
1925. Final installation in Paris
1942. Flight from Paris and hiding in Lalouvesc in Ardèche
[1945 Return to Paris where she rents a room which will serve as her studio and laboratory
1949. Start taking photographs in slaughterhouses
1958. Last retrospective of Madame d’Ora in Paris with an inaugural speech by Jean Cocteau
1962. Return to Austria to Frohnleiten where Dora was able to recover her family home confiscated in 1939.
1963. Death of Dora Kallmus in Frohnleiten