Margaret (Margarethe) Michaelis-Sachs (née Gross, 1902 – 1985) was an Austrian-Australian photographer of

Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

origin. In addition to her many portraits, her scenes of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona and other places and her images of the Jewish quarter in Kraków in the 1930s are of lasting historical interest.

Early life

Born in Dzieditz near Bielsko in southern Poland (then Austria-Hungary) on 6 April 1902, she was the daughter of Heinrich Gross, a well-to-do Jewish doctor. She studied photography at Vienna's ''Graphische Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt'' from 1918 to 1921.Helen Ennis, "Michaelis, Margarethe (1902–1985)"
''Australian Dictionary of Biography''. Retrieved 14 March 2013.

Career

In 1922, still in Vienna, she first worked for a period at the ''Studio d'Ora'' before spending a number of years at the ''Atelier für Porträt Photographie''. She went on to work for ''Binder Photographie'' in Berlin and ''Fotostyle'' in Prague, and finally returned to Berlin in 1929 to work intermittently for a variety of studios during the hard times of the Depression.Helen Ennis, "Margaret Michaelis: Love, loss and photography"
National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 14 March 2013. In October 1933, she married Rudolf Michaelis who, as an anarcho-syndicalist, was almost immediately arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis. In December 1933, after Rudolf's release, the couple moved to Spain but they separated shortly afterwards. In Barcelona, Michaelis opened her own studio, Foto-elis. Collaborating with a group of architects, she produced documentary images of progressive architecture which were published in Catalan journals such as ''D'Ací i d'Allà'' and, after the start of the civil war, ''Nova Iberia''. After returning to Poland in 1937, she obtained a German passport, went to London and, in September 1939, emigrated to Australia, first working as a house maid in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

. In 1940, she opened her "Photo-studio", becoming one of the few women photographers in Sydney. She specialized in portraits, especially of Europeans, Jews and people in the arts, many published in ''Australia'' and ''Australian Photography''. A member of the photographers' associations of New South Wales and Australia, in 1941 she was the only woman to join the Institute of Photographic Illustrators. Margaret Michaelis' photographic career came to an end in 1952 as a result of poor eyesight. In 1960, she married Albert George Sachs, a glass merchant. She died on 10 October 1985 in Melbourne.

Styles

In her early life, Michaelis used the sharp focus and sometimes unusual vantage points of modernist photography, while her portraits sought to reveal the psychological essence of her sitters. Her portraits were primarily focused on capturing the lives of Jewish immigrants. Of particular significance is the small set of scenes from the Jewish market in Kraków taken in the 1930s. Helen Ennis of the National Gallery of Australia stated the images "carry the weight of history, offering a visual trace of a way of life that was destroyed by fascism. " Michaelis was also fond of self-portraiture using the landscapes around Sydney and Melbourne as her backdrop.

Legacy

During the Spanish Civil War, she used her

Leica Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetzlar, Germany. ...

camera in Barcelona and other places in Catalonia for the public relations office of the

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

movement CNT-FAI (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and Federación Anarquista Ibérica). These were used by the propaganda commissariat of the CNT-FAI in an effort to encourage morale and action in their fight against the Spanish Fascist movement. At the end of the civil war, her photographs along with other documents were shipped in wooden crates to the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. Overlooked and forgotten in the crates, her and fellow photographer Kati Horna's photographs were only rediscovered after 80 years by Spanish art historian and curator Almudena Rubio. Most of these pictures had never been published and were presented for the first time in an exhibition in Madrid during the PhotoEspaña festival in June 2022. Among Michaelis’s pictures are scenes of street actions by anarchist militants, views of daily life in Barcelona and Catalonian villages, rare photographs of the veteran anarchist

Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...

and the arrival of the British Red Cross in Portbou on the border between France and Spain. On the occasion of the Madrid exhibition, Rubio was quoted:

Exhibitions

* 1987: Retrospective, National Gallery of Australia * 1998: Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno Centre Julio González, Valencia * 2005: Retrospective, National Gallery of Australia

References

External links

Examples of Margaret Michaelis work from the National Gallery of Australia

Margaret Michaelis' article in The New York Public Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Michaelis-Sachs, Margaret 1902 births 1985 deaths Photographers from Vienna Austrian women photographers Australian women photographers Australian portrait photographers People from Czechowice-Dziedzice Austrian Jews Austrian emigrants to Australia Photography in Spain 20th-century Australian women artists 20th-century Australian artists 20th-century women photographers