Bing studied art history at Frankfurt University,
and in 1926 began to
take photographs for use in her Ph.D. dissertation. By 1929 she gave up academia
for photography and in 1930 she moved to Paris to
pursue her career.
During the 1930’s Bing achieved great
success and a considerable
reputation in the avant-garde of the Paris art world. Exhibiting along
with such contemporaries as Man Ray, Andre Kertesz, Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy and Cartier-Bresson, Bing was known as one of the
pioneers of photography’s Golden Age.
She was widely exhibited in Europe, the United States and Japan. In
1936, Bing was included in the first modern photography exhibition
held at the Louvre. Exclusively using the newly developed Leica
camera, Bing took photographs which embraced spontaneity and
technical difficulties. Tilting the camera straight down in a perspective distorting
view, recording the blurs and whirling movement of modern life, or pushing into
the darkly lit clubs and streets of Paris without a
flash were among the qualities captured in many of Bing’s greatest images.
Undoubtedly the best known work of Bing’s Paris years, however, is a self-portrait
with her Leica taken in 1931.
< back to
artist
|
