Florence Henri

Circulating between Munich, Vienna, Rome, and Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century, Florence Henri studied music and painting while mingling with art-world luminaries. She shifted her focus to photography upon settling in Paris in 1924, and by 1929 she had opened her own studio, attracting such notable pupils as Lisette Model and Gisèle Freund. With 130 vintage prints, made between 1927 and 1940, this exhibition examines Henri’s diverse photographic output of abstract compositions, portraits, nudes, and photomontages. Influenced by Constructivism and Surrealism, her work delves into the experimental possibilities of the photographic medium both inside and outside the camera. In addition to layering negatives and shooting multiple exposures, Henri enhanced her compositions with optical tricks using mirrors or collage. She created surprising spatial layouts that fragmented or multiplied planes, and her still life images, featuring silver orbs or simple spools of thread, as in Composition, 1928, highlight skillful staging. Her commercial photography also retains her stamp. In a 1929 Lanvin fragrance ad, for instance, a clever play with mirrors makes a perfume bottle proliferate like a string of oversize beads.

Human presence changes the tone in the artist’s otherwise playful work. Her nudes feel dreamy, with bodies present but thoughts elsewhere. A tightly framed portrait series features doleful faces. Of these, a pensive shot, Tulia Kaiser, 1930, closes in on Kaiser as she ponderously rests her head on her forearm, while Lore, 1935, captures a fraught internal moment on the subject’s face. Even in Henri’s solemn self-portraits, she bears the quiet expression of an imaginative mind at work.