Helmar Lerski

(b Strasbourg, 18 Feb 1871; d Zurich, 29 Nov 1956). Swiss photographer and film maker of Polish descent. He changed his name in 1896. After some years in the USA, he moved to Berlin in 1916, where he worked as a photographer and as a cameraman on various films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926). In 1931 he published K?pfe des Alltags, a collection of portraits of working-class figures, comparable to August Sander's Antlitz der Zeit (Munich, 1929). Lerski concentrated on archetypal characteristics rather than on individual features, favouring extreme close-ups and tight cropping, and he became renowned for his experiments with multiple light sources. From 1931 he worked as a photographer and film director in Palestine. In 1948 he settled in Zurich.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Lerski, Helmar (Israel Schmuklerski; 1871-1956), Swiss actor, writer, photographer, and film-maker. Raised in Zurich, he spent several years in North Africa before moving to the USA, where he became a film actor and then one of the earliest professional cinematographers. From 1915 he followed the same profession in Berlin, before turning to portraiture in 1928. His dramatically lit images of working men and women won immediate acclaim. From 1932 until 1948, with a two-year interlude before the Second World War, Lerski worked as a photographer and film producer in Palestine. In both his Berlin and his Palestine portraits he used mirrors and white surfaces to create a theatrical ‘light structure’ around his subjects. In 1936 he executed his best-known experiment in portraiture: more than 160 images of a street sweeper, called The Metamorphosis of Light. This final photographic statement was followed by a shift to documentary film. In 1948 Lerski moved back to Zurich.

— Rolf Sachsse

Bibliography

• Eskildsen, U. (ed.), Metamorphosis through Light (1982)

Human hends (1933-1940).

from the serice Jewish soldiers (1942-1943).

Helmar Lerski (18 February 1871, Strasbourg - 19 September 1956, Zürich) was a photographer who laid some of the important foundations of modern photography. His works are on display in the USA, Germany, Israel and Switzerland. He focused mainly on portraits and the technique of photography with mirrors.

His real name was Israel Schmuklerski. The family moved in 1876 to Zurich, Switzerland, where the family was naturalized. In 1888, Lerski emigrated to the United States, where he worked as an actor. Around 1910, he began to photograph. In 1915, he returned to Europe and worked as a cameraman and expert for special effects for many films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis. At the end of the 1920s, he made a name as an avant-garde portrait photographer.

In 1932, he emigrated with his second wife to Palestine, where he continued to work as a photographer, cameraman, and film director. On 22 March 1948, they left Palestine and settled again in Zurich.

Photographic work

• Series Köpfe des Alltags: 1928 - 1930, published 1931
• Series Metamorphosen: 1936, published 1982

Publications

• Lerski, H.: Köpfe des Alltags, Berlin: Verlag Hermann Rockendorf, 1931.
• Ebner, F.: Metamorphosen des Gesichts. Die "Verwandlungen durch Licht" von Helmar Lerski. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2002. ISBN 3882438088.
• Eskildsen, U. (ed.); Lerski, H.: Verwandlungen durch Licht. Metamorphosis through Light,, Freren: Luca, 1982.
• Eskildsen, U.; Horak, J.-C.: Helma Lerski, Lichtbildner. Fotografien und Filme 1910-1947, Folkwang Essen 1982.

External links

• Helmar Lerski: Metamorphose, in German.
• Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. In German.
• Article about Metamorphosen, Art Magazin, 2002.
• Some images from Köpfe des Alltags at the George Eastman House.
• Loewy, R.: Adamah - Helmar Lerski's letzter Film. In German.

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