JACOBI, Lotte [Carl Zahn; Yousuf Karsh; Estrellita Karsh].
Lotte Jacobi.
Danbury, New Hampshire: Addison House , 1978.
$2,000.00
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Item Number: RRB-151772
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First Edition of Lotte Jacobi; Inscribed by Designer Carl Zahn to Celebrated Portrait Photographer Yousuf Karsh
First edition of this autobiography of Lotte Jacobi, exploring her journey from running a premier Berlin studio to becoming a renowned photographer of cultural icons in New York. Square quarto, original publisher’s cloth, illustrated with a curated selection of her iconic portraits and photographs. Association copy, inscribed by the book's designer Carl Zahn on the front free endpaper to celebrated portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh and his wife Estrellita, "For Yousuf & Estrellita affectionately Carl, Felicitas & Maja 14-3-80." Karsh had photographed Carl Zahn on November 28, 1979. Yousuf Karsh is recognized as one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. Arriving in Canada in 1924 as an Armenian refugee, Karsh eventually settled in Ottawa. Over six decades, he mastered the art of portraiture and created a unique chronicle of his time through images of celebrated legends. Some of his most notable subjects include Winston Churchill, Audrey Hepburn, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Ernest Hemingway, among others. A celebrity in his own right, he was an elegant and charming public figure, captivating audiences with compelling stories told in images and words. Karsh sought to capture, as he put it, the “elusive moment of truth,” revealing the essential nature of his subjects as reflected in their eyes, hands, and attitudes. From the collection of Yousuf Karsh with his estate label to the front pastedown. Held by the Estate of Yousuf & Estrellita Karsh; after Yousuf’s death in 2002 passing to Estrellita Karsh; after Estrellita’s death in March 2025 passing to Katherine Getchell. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Cover and frontispiece by Lotte Jacobi. Book design by Carl Zahn.
Lotte Jacobi (1896–1990) was a German-American photographer whose six-decade career bridged the worlds of Weimar-era European modernism and mid-century American intellectual and artistic life, producing a body of work remarkable for both its historical scope and its intimate psychological penetration. Born in Thorn, Prussia, into a distinguished dynasty of photographers stretching back four generations, Jacobi studied at the Bavarian State Academy of Photography in Munich before establishing herself in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s as one of the city's most sought-after portrait photographers. Her Berlin studio became a gathering place for the cultural and political luminaries of the Weimar Republic, and her portraits from this period — of figures including Albert Einstein, Peter Lorre, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill, and Claire Waldoff — constitute an invaluable visual record of a brilliant and doomed cultural moment. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, Jacobi resettled first in New York, where she continued her portrait practice among émigré artists and intellectuals, and later in Deering, New Hampshire, where she maintained a studio and gallery until late in her life. In her later career she developed a series of abstract cameraless images she called photogenics, placing her in conversation with the experimental traditions of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy.
Lotte Jacobi.
$2,000.00
In Stock
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