Aenne Biermann
Germany (1898—1933)Born Anna Sibylla Sternefeld, Biermann discovered photography in the early 1920s by taking portraits of her children. A self-taught photographer, she soon developed her skills and became one of the leading figures of the Neues Sehen (New Vision) and New Objectivity movements. By the end of the decade her work was being shown in major exhibitions in Germany and across Europe, including the International Photography Exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1932. She died in 1933 from liver disease. Following her family’s emigration, much of her photographic archive was destroyed or lost: negatives left in Gera were destroyed in a bombing raid, while two containers carrying part of the archive were confiscated by Nazi authorities in Trieste in 1944.
