For almost a decade, Lotte Jacobi
directed a successful, family-owned and operated photographic portrait studio
in Berlin before she immigrated to the United States in 1935. A fourth-generation
photographer, she was aware of the new trends in photographic representation
set forth by the Bauhaus and other avant-garde circles in Europe and
incorporated innovations such as unusual vantage points and dramatic lighting
into her own work. However, Jacobi's portraits do not appear to be staged or manipulated;
they seem personal and natural.

Jacobi often knew the people she
photographed. The close-knit artistic and literary circles of 1930s Berlin provided
an ample supply of clients. This familiarity and Jacobi's relaxed approach
while at work account for her sitters' casual demeanor. The sculptor Ernesto de
Fiori and his model Mady Christians, an actress, are pictured here with two
portrait busts of the model in the sculptor's own studio. In effect this
treatment provides a double interpretation of Christians: one sculptural, the
other photographic. Because of the unusually low position of the camera
relative to the sculptor and his model, the portrait acquires a relaxed and
intimate air, almost as if Jacobi were a participant in their conversation.