Marianne Breslauer (Berlin, 1909 –Zurich, 2001) belonged to a generation of women photographers who managed to take advantage of the freedom afforded them by the Weimar Republic. Her work is a notable example of the ‘new photography’ and can be found today in important collections. For the first time, we have the chance to see her work in our country, including most of the photographs she took in the spring of 1933, on a trip to Spain (Girona, Barcelona, Sant Cugat, Montserrat, the Pyrenees, Pamplona and San Sebastián) and Andorra with the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942). Only a few of these shots could be published in Germany at the time because of the National-Socialist regime, as Breslauer was Jewish. Her brief and promising career (1927-1938) was cut short by emigration and exile, but, in spite of this, her name and her works now form part of the history of photography.

When asked in an interview what made a good shot, Marianne Breslauer answered at once and without hesitating, ‘You know because people don’t walk past it in an exhibition, because people are attracted by a page in a magazine or stop browsing a book. Neither technical perfection nor striking subject matter are decisive; what matters is the power of the image, the expression –the secret of the moment captured–’.

Exhibition catalogue

To know more: Marianne Breslauer's photographs from her trip through our country in 1933

#Breslauer