Not an unusual life for the time and place: Etel Mittag-Fodor

Stutterheim, Kerstin

Abstract

On the occasion of the festival year "1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany", the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) presents an exhibition of portraits, still lifes and architectural photographs by the Bauhaus photographer Etel Mittag-Fodor from 1928 to 1938 from 10 September to 24 October 2021.

https://www.khm.de/glasmoog_programmarchiv/news.5198.etel-mittag-fodor-not-an-unusual-life-for-the-time-and-the-place/

Etel Fodor grew up in a Jewish family in Austria-Hungary. She lived in Germany from 1928 to 1933/1936. After studying photography and commercial art at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna, she studied at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930 in the photography class newly established by Walter Peterhans and also worked in the graphics workshop. Her photographs are distinguished by a concentrated through-design of the entire image surface. This is structured by a dynamic and rhythmic design, like a texture. In 1933, a large part of her work was destroyed. After the NSDAP came to power, Etel Mittag-Fodor had to leave Germany and lived mainly in Pécs. She returned to Berlin briefly for the 1936 Olympics. In 1938, she emigrated with her husband Ernst Mittag to South Africa, where her uncle lived. There she first worked as an architectural and children's photographer and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement. From 1964 until her old age, she was artistically active and worked mainly on weavings, which unfortunately have not survived.

With the monographic exhibition of Etel Mittag-Fodor (1905-2005), the KHM pays exemplary tribute to an important photographer of artistic modernism whose extraordinary life and artistic work, spanning an entire century, tells of the diversity and heterogeneity of German-Jewish history. Sound recordings of an interview with Etel Mittag-Fodor as well as the memoirs written for her grandchildren, published in 2014 under the title A Life Not Even Unusual for This Time and Place in the publication series "Bauhäusler. Dokumente aus dem Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin", which gave the exhibition its title, provide an insight into an eventful life as an artist that was shaped by National Socialist terror, resistance, flight and exile.

The exhibition is being produced in collaboration with the Bauhaus Archive Berlin, curated by Kerstin Stutterheim and Heike Ander. An accompanying programme is in preparation.

Supported by #2021 JLID - Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland e.V. with funds from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, for Construction and Home Affairs.

Citation

Stutterheim, K. (2021). Not an unusual life for the time and place: Etel Mittag-Fodor. [photo]. Exhibited at Cologne, Germany. 21 October 2021 - 24 October 2021. (Unpublished)

• Exhibition Performance Type: Exhibition
• Start Date: Oct 21, 2021
• End Date: Oct 24, 2021
• Publication Date: Sep 9, 2021
• Deposit Date: Oct 21, 2021
• Keywords: Etel Mittag-Fodor, photography
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2814835