Charlotte Rudolph (Dresden 1896 - 1983 Hamburg)

Self-Portrait

1936

vintage gelatin-silver photograph, mounted on cardboard

17 x 11,2 cm

blindstamp of “CH. RUDOLPH DRESDEN”

signed and dated in pencil on the cardboard, lower right: "Ch Rudolph 1936"

very good condition

Discussion:

Rare self-portrait by the Dresden photographer Charlotte Rudolph, who became one of the most important ambassadors of the new expressive dance in the 1920s and 1930s with her dynamic photographs of Gret Palucca, Mary Wigman, Vera Skoronel, and Chinita Ullmann.

"After training with Hugo Erfurth, Charlotte Rudolph opened a photo studio in Dresden in 1924 and concentrated on portrait and dance photography. In particular, Rudolph is known for her photographs of dancers such as Gret Palucca, with whom she was friends, Mary Wigman, and Vera Skoronel, as well as countless Wigman students such as Chinita Ullmann.  Rudolph's photographs of the avant-garde German dancers of the 1920s and 1930s are among the most important documents of expressive dance today. Unlike other photographers, Charlotte Rudolph didn't shoot the dancers in pose, but in action. Her pictures of Gret Palucca's jumps contributed significantly to Palucca's international fame in 1924 and were at the same time were responsible for Rudolph's own breakthrough. Charlotte Rudolph's archives and her studio in Dresden, which she took over in 1938 after the death of Genja Jonas, were destroyed during the Second World War when Dresden was bombed on February 13, 1945; however, Rudolph's works can be found, among other places, in the German Dance Archive [Deutsches Tanzarchiv] in Cologne, in the archive  of the Academy of Arts [Akademie der Künste], Berlin, in the archives of the Art Library of the Berlin State Museums [Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin], and in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library (Hanya Holm Collection)."  W