Helmut and Alison Gernsheim
A Couple’s Life for the History of Photography
p. 333-351
Texte intégral
1There are only a few couples in art history, and the history of photography in particular, who have worked as closely together as Alison and Helmut Gernsheim. With their shared passion for photography, they did research in a field, which was still not a recognized medium in the European history of art in the middle of the 20th century.1 It is undoubtedly the merit of the Gernsheims to have increased the interest and recognition of photography for a wider audience (fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Unidentified Photographer, Alison and Helmut Gernsheim hanging their exhibition at Wayne State University, Detroit, April 1963

© Contemporary Helmut Gernsheim Collection, Curt-Engelhorn-Stiftung, Mannheim
2Over a period of a quarter century, they both built up one of the world’s most significant collections of historic photographs. The research work performed by the Gernsheims probably never would have been possible if the husband and wife had not worked together congenially as collectors, historians, authors, curators and supporters. Scholars have long recognized the importance of this special constellation. In 1985, John Pultz discussed the Gernsheims’ shared collection activities and their achievements in his article ‘Collectors of Photography’.2 More recent scholarly literature, in addition to honoring Helmut Gernsheim as the initiator, also describes the decisive role that Alison Gernsheim played as a collaborator in this unusual ‘collecting couple’.3 The field has yet to publish a separate work about Alison Gernsheim. The following will look explicitly at her achievements—in terms of her assistance in building the Gernsheim collection, but also and especially her significance as a photo historian in the areas of historical fashion photography and early medical photography.
The early London years
3Alison Gernsheim was born on February 10, 1911 as Alison Mary Eames in the London neighborhood of Upper Norwood. She spent her childhood and youth in the heart of the English capital, where her father worked as the director of Tanners Ltd.,4 a stationery wholesaler. Thanks to her middle-class upbringing, she enjoyed extensive schooling. First, she attended Hampstead High School for girls, and later Birkbeck College. After that, she had the opportunity—by no means common for young women during that time—to attend a secondary school in Paris, where she received her degree. After finishing her professional training as a secretary, she worked for various employers in this capacity for many years.
4At the age of twenty-seven, on August 2, 1938, Alison met Helmut Gernsheim in London for the first time.5 At the time of this encounter, her first husband, a bookkeeper whom she had married in 1936, accompanied her. There was an immediate attraction between Alison and Helmut, who was her junior by two years. Alison’s marriage fell apart in the following months; the couple separated amicably. Alison and Helmut, who had emigrated to London in 1937 because of his Jewish roots, entered into a close relationship. However, they suffered a sudden break in 1940 when Helmut Gernsheim was interned due to his status as a ‘enemy alien’—in other words, he was considered a political refugee, but at the same time a potentially threatening foreigner.6
5Only after about a year and a half spent in various Australian internment camps was Helmut able to return to London in November 1941. During this politically and socially unstable time, the letters that the couple regularly sent one another, discussing the possible solutions for bringing Helmut back to England, were the only opportunity for a personal exchange.7 These letters, which are among Alison’s few known writings still in existence, are also significant for other reasons. For one thing, they demonstrate the couple’s close relationship, their shared worries and troubles during those difficult months. For another, Alison’s writings give us deeper insight into the character of this woman; most of the time she was very refined, modest and reticent, but here she shows incredible independence, drive and decisiveness.
6Despite strict limits on the length of the letters and censorship, which can be safely assumed, questions about photography, along with all personal sensitivities, had already become a central issue for the couple.8 Helmut’s return from his internment allowed the couple to live together for the first time. After Alison’s first husband agreed to their divorce in 1942, Alison and Helmut moved into their first shared home at St. Edmunds Court 19, near London’s Regent Park, only four weeks later. Together with the attic, which was quickly repurposed as a storage area, the space would become the headquarters and base camp for their collecting activities over the next decades.9 On March 9, 1945, they were married in London. Given the political situation, marrying before the official end of the war was a courageous and conscious decision for one another, which had far-reaching consequences for Alison as a British citizen. By marrying a German, who, as a ‘friendly foreigner’, was not eligible for British citizenship, she was no longer entitled to use a British passport herself. Not until two years later were they both recognized as having British citizenship10 (fig. 2).
Fig. 2: Alison Gernsheim, photographed by Helmut Gernsheim, March 1947

© Contemporary Helmut Gernsheim Collection, Curt-Engelhorn-Stiftung, Mannheim
7In these personally and politically troubled times, Helmut and Alison had a momentous encounter that was to lead their lives in a new direction. The first meeting between the Gernsheims and Beaumont Newhall, the then-curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, took place over the Christmas holidays in 1944.11 Newhall, who was an officer in the US Army at the time, had been sent to London on assignment for about fourteen days. The Gernsheims and Newhall met on several evenings at the America Club and in the couple’s London home. The three discovered many commonalities and similar views, not just about art history and photography, which provided them with endless material for long, drawn-out night-time conversations.
8When Newhall suggested to the Gernsheims on the evening before his departure that they should use their skills and interests to create a photographic collection, he was by no means speaking only to Helmut, but just as much to Alison, since he saw the couple’s relationship as the perfect basis for undertaking a successful collecting project.12
The Gernsheim collection: A shared passion for photography
9Several days after Beaumont Newhall’s departure, Helmut Gernsheim began to systematically search the dealers, second-hand stores and new bookshops in London for old photographs, and to buy them if they were of good quality.13 From this point on, there was no turning back for the Gernsheims. Right from the beginning, Alison shared her husband’s collecting enthusiasm without reservation—she was infected with the same ‘virus’, as he himself put it later on:
Collecting is a disease; once you begin you can’t leave off, and for over 10 years now my wife and I have invested all our money and energy in collecting and researching on the history of photography.14
10During their 25 years of marriage, Helmut and Alison formed a well-functioning team. Together they researched the sources and gathered information, which was then sorted into different categories: photographs, photographic processes, photographic apparatus, exhibitions, and other aspects of photography.
11From the start, the recipe for success in their collecting activities was based on a division of labor that took their individual interests and skills into account and combined them in an ideal way. The main part of the archiving work as well as the correspondence with photographers, museums and other institutions fell within Alison’s area of responsibility; her professional training as a secretary was put to good use here. In addition to German and French, she also knew a little Latin, which meant that she was mainly responsible when it came to searching for and skimming foreign literature and texts. In a typescript he wrote, Helmut states that their practical division of labor can be summed up in a nutshell: ‘Helmut Gernsheim searching for, and Alison Gernsheim researching on the items’.15 This approach was not least due to the different characters of the two. It is obvious that Helmut had the perfect predisposition for collecting—that he enjoyed the intuitive search in the holdings of antiquarian bookshops, the old binders and albums for sale on antique markets and the catalogs of booksellers. After all, he was the extroverted of the couple, whereas Alison was more quiet and reserved, and preferred to rule in the background.
12Alison’s work on the Gernsheim collection was not without consequence for their life together as husband and wife. Eventually, her work as a scholar became much more important to her than that of a housewife. In the Gernsheim house, this led to a distribution of domestic labor that was unusually emancipatory for the time: while Alison devoted herself completely to the office work, Helmut took care of the housework, did the shopping and the cooking.16
13At first, Alison was also able to contribute to the Gernsheim collection in a financial sense. Not only did they both invest their entire income to the extent possible—Alison even sold pieces of her own jewelry when they needed funds for new purchases. When their purchases for the collection nonetheless put the couple in a financially precarious position in the 1950s, Alison did not hesitate to invest an inheritance of several thousand pounds that she had received from her deceased aunt to help grow the collection.17 A significant portion of the inheritance went toward building their own in-house library. Up to that point, Alison had been an almost daily visitor in the reading room of the British Museum, where she often spent the day looking through literature for references to photos.18 With a library in their own four walls, the Gernsheims hoped to be able to research more quickly and efficiently than the still-limited facilities of the postwar libraries allowed. Alison faced a very different problem in her attempts to use the reading room of the Royal Photographic Society (R.P.S.): as a non-member, she was not able to access the library rooms, which were reserved exclusively for club members. For this reason alone, it was in her interest to lay the groundwork for her own photo library using the financial means that were available.19 In the years that followed, she cataloged her rapidly growing library of publications on photography, which finally comprised almost 4,000 volumes, including extremely rare works from the 16th century on optics and the pre-history of the medium.
Alison’s participation in publications and exhibitions
14For the Gernsheims, in addition to building the collection, a large part of their work had always been sharing their scholarly research in the form of publications. Their enormous publishing work and close collaboration is almost unprecedented in photo history and can be rivaled only by that of Nancy and Beaumont Newhall in the United States or, to a lesser extent, the collectors and booksellers Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes in France.20 During their years together, the couple published a total of 28 books, including monographs on individual photographers and personalities, studies on the history of photography and exhibition catalogs, as well as more than 200 articles and essays in trade journals, periodicals and encyclopedias.
15The first publications in the 1940s still name Helmut Gernsheim as the only editor. However, given their division of labor for every other project, we can safely assume that they applied the same proven model and divided the labor efficiently when it came to preparing these publications—and that Alison worked in the background as an author on these early books, too. Starting with their 1954 book about photographer Roger Fenton and his images and writings from the Crimean War, she is listed as an official co-editor on the title pages of all the books.
16Her work on the monograph Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Life and Photographic Work (1948) is also indisputable, since it was mainly Alison who raved about the unusual portraits and the religious romantic pictures in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites, inspired by the Victorian era and the fashions of the time. While Helmut had little interest in the overblown style of these ‘Victorian paper dolls’,21 Alison dedicated her first and only individual publication to the fashion and spirit of this era several years later.22
17The book Lewis Carroll—Photographer (1949) owes its existence in no small part to Alison’s outstanding knowledge of the literary collection at the British Museum. After her husband was offered an album of numerous signed portraits of children and famous British personalities during one of his regular forays through London’s second-hand shops, her research was able to reveal a sensational find that made photographic history. Helmut Gernsheim had not been aware of the writer’s photographic talent. Even the biographies of Carroll23 said nothing about this interest, which he appeared to have pursued to perfection. Helmut went back to the shop with Alison in order to look at the album again, in particular the index of people shown in the portraits, which had been written in a distinctive hand in purple ink. Alison did not wait long to confirm her initial suspicion; that same day, she visited the manuscript reading room of the British Museum in order to compare their manuscripts by Lewis Carroll with the entries in the photo album. The results were clear: not only did the purple ink match the entries in the album, but it was without a doubt the handwriting of the famous author! Thus it is largely due to her expertise that Lewis Carroll’s long-forgotten legacy as an outstanding portraitist, especially of children, was rediscovered and brought to public light.24
18For the publication Focus on Architecture and Sculpture (1949), Alison researched and wrote the explanations for the individual plates. In the artist monographs on photographers Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1956) and Alvin Langdon Coburn (1966) as well as in the photography histories intended for a broader audience, Those Impossible English25 (1952), Churchill: His Life in Photographs (1955) and Queen Victoria: A Biography in Word and Picture (1959), Alison did a significant portion of the scholarly research as well as the editorial work, while her husband was responsible for choosing the images. However, the fact that, in their jointly published works, Alison Gernsheim was largely responsible for the scholarly treatment of the documents and a large part of the writing is mentioned explicitly only in their last joint publication, Edward VII and Queen Alexandra: A Biography in Word and Picture (1963).
19The collectors’ most important and comprehensive publication, the almost four-hundred-page encyclopaedic History of Photography—From the Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century Up to 1914 (1955), was only made possible because of their proven model of an efficient division of labor. The book, which was reprinted in 1969 as an expanded edition under the slightly modified title ‘The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era’, is rightly considered their joint masterpiece and still one of the standard works in photo history to this day.
20Their close, equal collaboration is also documented by the exhibitions that they designed and curated beginning in the 1950s. From May 1 to October 11, 1951, under the exhibition title ‘Masterpieces of Victorian Photography, 1840–1900’, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum presented masterpieces from its collection for the first time, as part of a broadly conceived retrospective of the Victorian Age. This was followed by numerous other exhibition projects both domestically and abroad, where the Gernsheims acted as curators and were responsible for publishing the accompanying catalogs. One of their most important participations in exhibitions was undoubtedly the participation in the ‘World Exhibition for Photography’, which took place from May 15 to July 31, 1952 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Among others, the exhibition was under the patronate of UNESCO. The exhibition wanted to give the general public an overview of photography and was the first of its kind in Europe. The list of participants reads like a who’s who of the international photographers of the time, including names such as Richard Avedon, Brassaï, Robert Doisneau, Robert Frank, but also photo historians and collectors such as Erich Stenger. The Gernsheims and Erich Stenger made a significant contribution to the historical section. Their jointly assembled exhibition part ‘A Century of Photography’ was particularly highlighted in the press reviews. This was also because the section opened with the heliography ‘View from the window on Le Gras’ (ca 1826) by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, which had only recently been rediscovered by the Gernsheims and which was presented as ‘The World’s First Photography’26 (fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Josef Brun, Alison and Helmut Gernsheim in the night before the opening of the World Exhibition of Photography, Lucerne, 15th May 1952 at 3 AM

© Reproduced with the kind permission of the heirs of Josef Brun
Alison Gernsheim as a photo historian: Early Medical photography
21Starting in the 1960s, Alison also increasingly focused on her own projects and areas of specialization. Her chosen research fields could not have been any more diverse: on the one hand, she was interested in the fashion photography of the Victorian era and its socio-historical function; on the other, she was fascinated by the beginnings of medical photography during that time. Her motifs were located in a field of tension between the representatives of British nobility and the upper class, in their opulent crinolines and elegant suits on the one hand, and the images of patients’ backs disfigured by tumors and gaping operation wounds on the other.
Fig. 4: Obituary for Alison Gernsheim, published in The Times, April 7, 1969

22Alison’s interest in medical photography was the result of her general photographic historical research. During the years she spent working with her husband on their History of Photography, she was constantly coming across materials and documents that dealt with this specialized aspect of photography:
In our 15 years of research on the history of photography, my husband and I found numerous references to the applications of photography in medicine and surgery during the 19th century, and we discovered a series of rare photographs.27
23Her research in this area represents a pioneering achievement. The field of medical photography was unexplored photographic territory, and we can assume that this was exactly what attracted Alison to it and spurred her decision to devote herself to this not-yet-researched topic. She also made her findings and her collected discoveries available to later scholars and photo historians for their own investigations. Her essay ‘Medical Photography in the Nineteenth Century’, published in April 1961 in the British Medical Society’s publication series, is not only her first publication on this topic, but is still considered the first comprehensive representation of the issue anywhere.28 Her article was divided in two sections: the first focuses on the history and beginning of medical photography while the second discusses the special topic of ‘early photography of skin diseases’ as well as ‘the introduction of special techniques, post-modern photography, the precursors of motion pictures, endoscopic photography and documentary photography.’ Her preliminary research for the article turned out to be extremely difficult. Even in the collections of the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, which were by now very familiar to her, there was no secondary literature to be found.29 Various other hurdles also cropped up. The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London refused Alison’s request to use images from their archives as illustration materials for the project.30 Thus in order to illustrate her first article she had to rely on images from the Royal Society of Medicine, which had granted Helmut permission to make reproductions from their photographic archives.
24Alison’s first article on the history of medical photography reveals the same meticulous research and almost detective-like approach to content that she had shown in previous publications. Right from the beginning, she was able to refute the common assumption among medical professionals at the time that medical photography had not developed parallel to the development of the medium, but had only evolved in more recent years. Her profound knowledge of older publications about the first photographic experiments in the 18th century also allowed her to predate the beginnings of medical photography to the first third of the 18th century. She was able to name William Cheselden, an English surgeon and later personal physician of Queen Caroline who created optical templates using a camera obscura in order to draw anatomical sketches as precisely as possible, as the father of the field.31
25The content of her article shows the development of medical photography in an interplay with the general technical developments of the medium. Beginning with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s groundbreaking photochemical invention to fix images in 1826 and the official introduction of the daguerreotype in 1839, she traces the medical field’s early attempts to adopt the new techniques and possibilities for scientific research. Her technical analysis of the first photographic micro-images of anatomical preparations, created in 1840 by Alfred Donné, the chief physician of the Charité clinic in Paris, once again demonstrate Alison’s deep technical understanding of the individual photographic and photochemical processes and their respective advantages and disadvantages. For instance, she carefully explores the characteristics of the individual backing materials, their light sensitivity and reproduction quality, the complicated experimental structures with heliostats and limelights, as well as the various difficulties involved in focal length, exposure times and reproduction options. Alison’s first article also focuses on introducing the physicians who were the pioneers of medical photography, as well as providing bibliographical information for publications that contain information and illustration materials about early medical photography.
26In 1963, Alison published another article on the same topic, titled ‘Die frühe medizinische Fotografie’ (Early Medical Photographe), this time in the trade journal of the pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann—La Roche AG.32 In terms of its content, the piece resembles the article that was published two years earlier, but the author is able to provide new findings and the names of additional physicians, and she further supports her thesis that medical photography was pursued in many European countries as early as the middle of the 19th century.
27Alison Gernsheim did not publish any further writings about medical photography. However, there is an eighteen-page typescript titled Medical Photography before 1900,33 that bears an entry stamp dated May 11, 1964 as well as numerous additions and corrections in the author’s handwriting, suggesting that a new publication was close to being finished (fig. 5). This article was much more comprehensive than the previous publications. In the first chapter of the text, which is divided into a total of five chapters, Alison discusses the developments and representatives of medical photography in the 19th century in much more detail than before. This is followed by glossaries of the most important photographic processes of the time, their inventors and the possibilities for early book illustrations. Her essay, which was principally published for specialists in the field of medical science, is also a chronology of photographic techniques linked with the medical photography. The article ends with a biographical appendix listing the main figures in 19th century medical photography, as well as a bibliography and a list of the references used. The bibliography in particular clearly shows how extensively Alison worked on this topic during the years after her first publication in 1961. While the bibliography for her first article had only 15 titles in it, the bibliography for her unpublished typescript spans 71 titles. She was also able to add several new illustrations.
Fig. 5: Front page of the typescript Medical Photography before 1900 by Alison Gernsheim, 1964

© Contemporary Helmut Gernsheim Collection, Curt-Engelhorn-Stiftung, Mannheim
Alison Gernsheim as a photo historian.Fashion photography of the Victorian age
28Another of Alison Gernsheim’s interests was the fashion photography of the Victorian era. Her passion for the opulent fashions of this era began early. Even as a child, she admired the elaborate costumes worn by the actors in historical pieces and Shakespearean plays. At a young age, one of her favorite activities was dressing up in bygone styles to play the harp.34 As an adult, she remained much more fascinated by the crinolines and clever draping of that era than by current fashion trends, even though she personally appreciated the adjustments to clothing that accompanied the societal emancipation of women, following the maxim of comfort and functionality. By contrast, she had little patience for other trends and fashions, as revealed by her gently mocking view of high-heeled women’s shoes:
It [the high-heel, S. H.] increased until its present extreme height and narrowness surpasses anything known before. It is understandable that women may endure such shoes at an occasional party, but I am filled with amazement when I see young mothers pushing a perambulator in the park, and women doing their domestic shopping, staggering on stiletto heels with bent knees.35
29Her intense interest in fashion photography, as had been the case with medical photography, developed as a logical consequence of her daily photo-historical work. In organizing their collection, Alison and Helmut quickly realized the importance of dating the pieces as precisely as possible. However, since the information was only available in very rare cases and the photographer’s biographical details were too vague to be helpful in dating the pictures, Alison began to implement her knowledge of each era’s various fashions and variations so that they could retroactively date the photos based on the typical stylistic features of the clothing.
30With the publication of her book Fashion and Reality (1840–1914) in 1963, she once again broke new scholarly ground, this time in the area of fashion research (fig. 6). While the book market had already seen numerous publications on Victorian fashion, the descriptions and summaries were almost exclusively based on the highly idealized fashion sketches and illustrations in fashion journals of the time, without taking the realistic documentary evidence of contemporary photographs into account. By using numerous contemporary photographs to illustrate her analysis of men’s and women’s fashions in the Victorian era, Alison revealed their special stylistic features and their wealth of variation through photography. At the same time, she created a convincing frame of reference that allowed readers to evaluate whether what had previously been considered typical fashions for the time—and what the idealized fashion illustrations and paintings of the time suggested—actually corresponded to reality. Alison was the first to use the indicator function of photographs in this context. The results were correspondingly surprising. Through her written explanations and above all the plentiful pictures, she was able to point out the great discrepancy between what had commonly been considered ‘Victorian and Edwardian fashion’ and the fashion that had actually been worn, with its many facets, modifications and personalized variations. The book’s title, Fashion and Reality, once again highlights this newfound realization. Its resonance in the international media and trade press was enormous. Numerous reviews praised not only the enlightening insights into the actual fashions of the Victorian Era, but also the book’s innovative approach, with its plentiful photographic reproductions that vividly brought the writing to life.36
Fig. 6: Alison Gernsheim’s Victorian and Edwardian Fashion-A Photographic Survey (1st Edition 1963, 2nd Edition 1981, with the mentioned new title), published by Dover Publications, January 1, 1982

31The publication followed a fifteen-year period of focusing on this topic. The text section is divided into two chapters; the first, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Crinoline’, deals with specific pieces of clothing, especially the abovementioned hooped skirt, while the second chapter, ‘Curves and Verticals’, deals with various cuts and ways of wearing the clothing. The illustration section is much more extensive than the text, with a total of 235 photographic reproductions. Alison was able to draw on their own collection for almost all of the illustration materials, including pictures by renowned photographers such as David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton—more commonly known for his war photos—and Alice Hughes, the first professional photographer who made a name for herself taking portraits of ladies and children of the British aristocracy and upper class.37
‘The Gernsheims’: An extraordinary collecting couple and its legacy
32The Gernsheims’ collaborative work came to a tragic end with Alison’s death on March 27, 1969, at just 58 years of age. The cause of death was later diagnosed as an embolism resulting from the complicated fracture of her left upper arm during a fall.38 Alison’s sudden death was an almost unbearable loss for Helmut. He had lost not only his beloved wife, but also—after 31 years of collaboration—his mental and spiritual companion. In letters to friends and relatives, he expressed serious doubts about whether he could muster the necessary energy to continue their shared life’s work and finish the publications they had planned together:
We had spent several years in London collecting material for new books, but will I be able to find the willpower to complete these projects without my co-worker, who knew the material as well as I did? 39
33The respect that Alison enjoyed in professional circles, too, can be seen from the shocked responses to her death. International magazines and journals published memorial notices and obituaries reminiscing about her achievements as a photo historian.40 On April 7, 1969, an obituary appeared in The Times that described at length her accomplishments in building the Gernsheim Collection, her role as a co-editor of groundbreaking publications about photographic history, and her own scholarly research (fig. 4). Numerous representatives of major national and international institutions expressed their sorrow at the human and scholarly loss and the large gap that Alison’s death was leaving in the professional photography world.41
34Many of her long-time acquaintances—including Beaumont Newhall as well as L. Fritz Gruber, Edward Steichen, Fritz Kempe and Lucia Moholy-Nagy—deeply regretted the loss of their valued colleague. As an example, we cite here the letter of condolence from Beaumont Newhall to Helmut Gernsheim, whose personal words reflect the greatest possible respect for Alison’s achievements, both alone and at her husband’s side:
In the many books which Alison produced, both alone and with you, she has left a mark which will never be forgotten. The contribution made by the Gernsheims to photography has been rich, and has opened the eyes of a generation to this great medium.42
35In recognition of his wife’s great achievements and contributions, Helmut continued to publish numerous books, reprints and new editions under both of their names even after her death. The second edition of their joint reference work The History of Photography, which appeared in 1969 shortly after Alison’s death, begins with the following dedication by Helmut Gernsheim:
In honour and loving memory of alison gernsheim whose tragic death on 27 March 1969 has deprived me—after 27 years of marriage—of a wonderful companion, an ideal collaborator and a wise counsellor.43
36The achievements that Helmut and Alison have attained for the medium of photography and its recognition as an autonomous artistic genre are undisputed. The fact that museums around the world are showing photography in large exhibitions and integrating it into their collections is to this extraordinary couple. Their own collection has meanwhile spread internationally. While the historical part is held by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, another part, mainly the duplicates, is housed in the photographic collection of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Notes de bas de page
1 See Stephanie Oeben, ‘Alison Gernsheim—Photo Historian and Collector’, in Alfried Wiezcorek, Claude W. Sui (eds.), The Birth of Photography. Highlights of the Gernsheim Collection, exh. cat., (Mannheim, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums, 2012 September 9 to 2013 January 6), Heidelberg, Kehrer, 2012, p. 48–69. The here published article is a partially revised and shortened version of the above-mentioned article by Stephanie Herrmann (née Oeben) from 2012.
2 John Pultz, ‘Collectors of Photography’, in A Personal View. Photography in the Collection of Paul F. Walter, exh. cat. (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1985 May 23–August 13), New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1985, p. 19.
3 Alison Nordström, ‘Ideas in Things. The Gernsheim Collection and the Histories of Photography’ in Roy Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Center Photography Series, Austin, Texas, University of Texas Press, 2010, p. 1. The Gernsheim Collection and its creators have already been the subject of several scholarly projects. See particularly the two exhibition catalogues, Alfried Wieczorek, Claude W. Sui (eds.), Helmut Gernsheim. Pionier der Fotogeschichte, publications of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Vol. 9, Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2003; Roy Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Center Photography Series, Austin, Texas, University of Texas Press, 2010.
4 In some places, the traditional Spicer Brothers paper factory is also mentioned. See Paul Hill, Thomas Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’ in Dialogue with Photography, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, p. 160–210, here p. 191.
5 On the following biographical details, see primarily Claude W. Sui, ‘Helmut Gernsheims Pionierarbeit als Sammler und Fotohistoriker’, in A. Wieczorek, C. W. Sui (eds.), Helmut Gernsheim…, op. cit., p. 19–43; Roy Flukinger, ‘Helmut and Alison Gernsheim and The Gernsheim Collection’, in R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 11–65.
6 In July 1940, Helmut Gernsheim and about 2,500 other emigrants from Germany and Austria were forced to embark on the repurposed warship Dunera, which was supposed to deport them to Canada but ultimately, after an odyssey of several months, ended up in Australia. See A. Wieczorek, C. W. Sui (eds.), Helmut Gernsheim…, op. cit., p. 21.
7 On the letter correspondence during the internment period, see also R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 18 and p. 19–20.
8 Ibid., p. 18.
9 Ibid., p. 21 and 28.
10 See the official letter by the passport agency dated September 11, 1945 and addressed to Alison Gernsheim, with the request to submit her passport immediately for cancellation. Not until two years later was she issued a new British passport, dated April 3, 1947, with her new last name: Alison Mary Gernsheim. Helmut Gernsheim was granted British citizenship on January 22, 1947 (File no. 21589) after his naturalization; in the archive of the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection in the Forum for International Photography at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen (rem) Mannheim.
11 See Helmut Gernsheim, ‘Gernsheim on Gernsheim’, Image—Journal of Photography and Motion Pictures of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, 27/4, December 1984, p. 2–8, here p. 2.
12 R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 13.
13 P. Hill, T. Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’, p. 180.
14 R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 33.
15 Ibid., p. 22.
16 P. Hill, T. Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’, p. 189. See also the letter from his brother Hans Gernsheim to Helmut Gernsheim, April 11, 1969, in the archive of the Gernsheim Collection.
17 P. Hill, T. Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’, p. 186; R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 33.
18 See the obituary for Alison Gernsheim in The Times, April 7, 1969.
19 P. Hill, T. Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’, p. 188.
20 R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 25.
21 Ibid., p. 40.
22 Alison Gernsheim (ed.), Fashion and Reality, London, Faber and Faber, 1963. A second unabridged and revised edition appeared in 1981 with a modified title: A. Gernsheim (ed.), Victorian and Edwardian Fashion. A Photographic Survey, New York, Dover Publications, 1981.
23 Given name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98)
24 See also: P. Hill, T. Cooper (eds.), ‘Interview with Helmut Gernsheim’, art. cité, p. 186–7; H. Gernsheim, ‘Gernsheim on Gernsheim’, 1984, p. 4–5. The book met with great media resonance in England and America. It was discussed in Life magazine, among others, and was the second most commonly reviewed book of the year. See Ibid., p. 8.
25 Due to an error by the publishing house, Alison Gernsheim’s credit as co-editor was missing on the book jacket, which Helmut Gernsheim called inexcusable in a letter to the publisher. His reaction is further evidence that he saw his wife as an equal scholar and demonstrates how he wanted her to be perceived in public. See R. Flukinger (ed.), The Gernsheim Collection, op. cit., p. 45.
26 Ibid., p. 34.
27 A. Gernsheim, ‘Die frühe medizinische Fotografie’, BD—Medizinischer Bild-Dienst, 1, February 1963, p. 7.
28 See Eva Brinkschulte, ‘Patienten in Pose—Zu den Patientenbildern aus dem gymnastisch-orthopädischen Institut von Heimann Wolff Berend in Berlin 1840–1870’, in Ludwig Zichner, Michael A. Rauschmann, Klaus-Dieter Thomann (eds.), Geschichte konservativer Verfahren an den Bewegungsorganen, Jahrbuch Deutsches Orthopädisches Geschichts- und Forschungsmuseum, Vol. 3, Darmstadt, 2001, p. 23.
29 A. Gernsheim, ‘Medical Photography in the Nineteenth Century’, Medical & Biological Illustration, 11/2, April 1961, p. 88.
30 Ibid., p. 85.
31 Ibid.
32 A. Gernsheim, ‘Die frühe medizinische Fotografie’, 1963. The article appeared in 1963 in the company’s own journals in English as well as in a French and a Dutch translation: ‘Les débuts de la photographie médicale’, Service bibliographique Roche, 28/7, 1963; ‘De vroege medische Fotografie’ in Literatuur-Dienst Roche, 31/7, 1963.
33 The original typescript is now in the archive of the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection, op. cit.
34 A. Gernsheim, Fashion and Reality, op. cit., 1963, p. 21 (Preface).
35 Ibid., p. 22.
36 Selected reviews have been collected in the ‘Clipping-Books’ created by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim themselves., Clipping-Book, No. VII, 1963–1969. The Clipping-Books are now in the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection, op. cit.
37 Andrea Inselmann (ed.), A Second Look. Women photographers of the Gernsheim Collection, exh. cat. Frankfurter Fototage 1993 (Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurter Fototage, 1993 August 26 to September 2), Frankfurt am Main, Locher, 1993, p. 11.
38 Upon Alison’s death, Helmut Gernsheim called for an extensive investigation of his wife’s medical treatment, because he believed the embolism had been caused by a doctor’s error. See the extensive documentation currently housed in the archive of the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection, op. cit.
39 Helmut Gernsheim, letter to his older brother Hans Gernsheim, April 22, 1969, in the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection, op. cit.
40 See Camera, 7, Lucerne, C. J. Bucher, 1969; Popular Photography Italiana, 6, Milan, Edizioni tecniche, 1969.
41 See the letters of condolence in the archive of the Contemporary Gernsheim Collection, op. cit.
42 Ibid., Beaumont Newhall, letter of condolence to Helmut Gernsheim, April 17, 1969.
43 Helmut and Alison Gernsheim (eds.), The History of Photography. From the Camera Obscura to the beginning of the Modern Era, London, Thames & Hudson, 1969.
Auteur
-
Stephanie Herrmann
Stephanie Herrmann (née Oeben) est historienne de l’art et conservatrice. Depuis 2015, elle est responsable des collections du Forum international de la photographie au Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen de Mannheim (Allemagne). Depuis juin 2022, elle y est également la directrice curatoriale de ZEPHYR-Raum für Fotografie, la galerie dédiée à la photographie contemporaine. Elle a participé à la conception et à la réalisation de nombreux projets d’expositions nationaux et internationaux et a été en charge de l’unique réunion jusqu’à ce jour de la collection Gernsheim à l’occasion de l’exposition The Birth of Photography – Highlights of the Gernsheim Collection en 2012. Membre de l’Oracle (Conference of International Photography Curators) depuis 2009, elle est également membre de la Société allemande pour la photographie (DGPh) depuis 2016.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Un art sans frontières
L’internationalisation des arts en Europe (1900-1950)
Gérard Monnier et José Vovelle (dir.)
1995
Le temps de l’oeuvre
Approches chronologiques de l’édification des bâtiments
Gérard Monnier (dir.)
2000
L’architecture : la réception immédiate et la réception différée
L’œuvre jugée, l’édifice habité, le monument célébré
Gérard Monnier (dir.)
2006
Guerre du toit et modernité architecturale
Loger l’employé sous la république de Weimar
Christine Mengin
2007
Au service du château
L’architecture des communs en Île-de-France au XVIIIe siècle
Christophe Morin
2008
En couple
Historiennes et historiens de l'art au travail
Victor Claass, Pascale Cugy, Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian et al. (dir.)
2024
