There is still time to experience Ilse Bing Between Paris and New York at the Chrysler Museum of Art before the exhibition closes this month.
The exhibition examines the life and work of German Jewish artist Ilse Bing (1899-1998), whose photographs captured the energy and complexity of life in Paris and New York during the 1930s. Featuring approximately 40 works from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition follows Bing’s journey from expatriate to refugee and immigrant, revealing how she used photography to navigate a rapidly changing world.
After moving from Germany to Paris in 1930, Bing became part of a cosmopolitan community of artists documenting modern urban life. Working with a Leica, the first mass-produced 35mm camera, she photographed the city from unusual angles and earned the nickname “Queen of the Leica” from photographer and critic Emmanuel Sougez in 1931.
A visit to New York City in 1936 inspired Bing to turn her camera toward the city’s skyline and cultural life. But her career in Paris was interrupted by the Nazi invasion of France. After being briefly interned, Bing secured safe passage to the United States and returned to New York in 1941 as a refugee.
“What attracted me to this body of work is that Bing’s photographs are so emblematic of a particular place and time—Paris and New York in the ‘30s—but her story also has incredible resonance with contemporary questions about migration and belonging,” says Mia Laufer, the Chrysler Museum’s Irene Leache Curator of European Art. “She went from living as a chic German expat in Paris, to being a refugee fleeing the Nazis, and finally an immigrant resettling in the States. Through it all, she used her camera to find her place in a world that was spinning out of control.”
The exhibition also includes two newly acquired photographs, Self-Portrait with Leica (1931) and Cancan, Moulin Rouge, Paris (1931), both created during Bing’s early years in Paris. These additions strengthen the Chrysler Museum’s holdings from this formative period and further highlight the contributions of women artists to the history of photography.
Organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art and curated by Laufer, Ilse Bing Between Paris and New York remains on view in the Frank Photography Gallery through October 18.
Hunter Thomas is the director of Arts + Ideas at the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater. He can be reached at HThomas@UJFT.org or 757-965-6137. Drew Lusher is the Public Programs and Community Partnerships manager at the Chrysler Museum of Art. He can be reached at
DLusher@Chrysler.org or 757-333-6242.
