« John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker | Main | Crisis or Opportunity? »
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Margaret Michaelis - Love, loss and photography
National Gallery of Australia: 7 May – 14 August 2005
Encounter (Shona Dunlop and Hilary Napier in “Seastudy”)' c.1947 gelatin silver photography Collection of the National Gallery of Australia
Like numerous other émigrés forced into exile during the 1930s, Austrian-born photographer Margaret Michaelis (nee Gross) arrived in Australia with very few possessions. However, she did manage to bring examples of the photographic work she had produced in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, as well as some personal items. The latter included a bundle of love letters from her first husband, Rudolf Michaelis, whom she had married in Berlin in 1933 and divorced in Barcelona four years later. Margaret Michaelis kept these photographs and letters with her throughout her life; the year after her death in 1985 they were donated to the National Gallery of Australia and are now part of the extensive Margaret Michaelis-Sachs archive. The exhibition Margaret Michaelis: Love, loss and photography is based on that archive and adopts a deliberately personal tone, weaving together aspects of Michaelis’s professional and personal lives. ...