#LGBTQI #history #photography
"The incredible story of a lesbian photographer who fled the Nazis
Curator Jen Wilbur was expecting around 70 boxes held at the Library of Birmingham relating to the photographer Lisel Haas. They kept piling up to an overwhelming 258. Each box revealed a remarkable history told through glass and celluloid negatives, photographs, proofs, letters, receipts, invoices and all manner of ephemera. Records of cameras and photographic materials tangled with correspondence on the merits of colour photography. There were client indexes, photographs of famous actors, ordinary families, animals, landscapes and friends. There was also a stack of mystery. ‘It is mega. It’s massive,’ says Wilbur, curator of Discovering Lisel Haas, an exhibition by Bertz Associates at the Library of Birmingham on until 12 December 2026.
The remarkable scale of the archive matches the life it documents. Born in Mönchengladbach, Germany in 1898, Lisel Haas had already established herself as a photographer before having to flee the Nazi’s in 1938. She had lived half a life and had to begin again in a new country and language when she arrived in Birmingham aged 40. Haas adapted quickly and within a few years had established her photographic career and built a close association with Birmingham Repertory Theatre. She went on to photograph some of the most celebrated actors of the era, including Paul Scofield, Albert Finney, Ian Richardson and Derek Jacobi. The celebrity portraits are only an incidental part of the story. Her life is one of exile, assimilation, women building professional lives, the cultural history of Birmingham, and a relationship that has largely remained in the shadows only to emerge properly when the boxes were opened."
https://amateurphotographer.com/latest/photo-news/the-incredible-story-of-a-lesbian-photographer-who-fled-the-nazis/
