Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon

Gem of an exhibition at the Wiener Library looking at the life and work of the photographer Gerty Simon.

Simon was a German Jewish photographer who photographed many important figures in Weimar Germany then as a refugee in Britain, set up a studio in London and photographed figures from 1930s London society. Her archive and a large collection of prints have been given to the library by her son.

The show told the story of her life clearly using the archive material then had a display of about 20 of her pictures with Berlin on one wall and London on the opposite one. You felt every photograph had a story behind it that you wanted to know more about. It was touching in the Berlin section to see a picture of the six year old Anna Judith Kerr who went on to write “The Tiger Who Came to Tea” when she moved to London and who died recently. I rather liked Alexander Iolas shown in the top left hand corner of the attached picture. I looked him us and he was a dancer and later become a gallery owner and art dealer in New York.

From the London section there was an interesting selection of British artists including Paul Nash and Frank Dobson but also actors such as Peggy Ashcroft and politicians such as Aneurin Bevan.

Closes on 15 October 2019