Dora Kallmus
Madame d' Ora ( artist name since 1907) or Dora Kallmus (actually, Dora Philippine Kallmus; born March 20, 1881 in Vienna, † October 30, 1963 in Frohnleiten / Styria ) was an Austrian photographer.
Life
Dora Kallmus came from a Jewish family. The family of the father, the Viennese Court and Court advocate Dr. Philip Kallmus (1842-1918), came from Prague. The family of mother, Malvine Sonnenberg (1853-1892), came from Krapina in Croatia. After her mother had died at 39 years, Dora was paternal educated with her sister Anna Malvine ( 1878-1941 ) from the grandmother.
For a woman, it was at that time difficult to get an education as a photographer. Kallmus could when visiting the studio of the society photographer Hans Makart gain experience and did not get the first woman to have access to the theory courses of the Vienna Graphic Arts and Research Institute, however, to their practice seminars.
From 1906 she took in Berlin Photography and retouching lessons with Nicola Perscheid and opened in 1907 already by her stage name Madame d' Ora, together with Arthur Benda Atelier d' Ora in Vienna's first district. She made portraits of "unknown" people, but was known especially with portraits of the Viennese artists and intellectuals scene. So she made photographs of Alma Mahler -Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Anna Pavlova, Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floege, Marie Gutheil- Schoder, Pablo Casals, Berta Zuckerkandl - Szeps and Anita Berber.
In 1916, she photographed the coronation of Charles I as King of Hungary and asked a series of portraits of the entire imperial family here. With increasing domestic and foreign success, she also worked as a fashion photographer from 1917. There were close contacts with the fashion department of the Wiener Werkstätte.
Madame d' Ora was 1927, the Atelier d' Ora Arthur Benda and moved to Paris, where she ran his own photo studio since 1925. In Paris, she expanded her fame as a corporate photographer and artist and was the main photographer of the actor and singer Maurice Chevalier. She made recordings of Josephine Baker, Tamara de Lempicka, Fritzi Massary, Marlene Dietrich and Coco Chanel. In addition, she worked as a fashion photographer, among other things for the lady, Madame and Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode and the great Parisian fashion houses such as Rochas, Patou, Lanvin, and Chanel.
The beginning of World War II initially meant also the end of society photographer Madame d' Ora. When German troops marched in 1940 she had to leave her Paris studio rushed and held as a fugitive in the South of France in a monastery and a farm in the Ardèche hidden. Her sister, with whom she had lived in Paris, was deported, as well as numerous other relatives murdered.
Madame d' Ora returned back to Austria in 1946 and photographed refugee camps and the ruined Vienna. Although it found its way back to society photography and created portraits of Somerset Maugham, Yehudi Menuhin and Marc Chagall, is found in her late work, the so-called " Slaughterhouse - series", whose images in dramatic colors as horse embryos in a garbage can, slaughtered rabbits and skinned show lambs.
As a result of a car accident in 1959 Madame d' Ora lost her memory. She spent her last years with a friend of her murdered sister Anna in Frohnleiten, where she died in 1963.
Discount
A total of around 90,000 images were taken 1907-1927. A majority of these recordings is now in the possession of the Picture Archive of the Austrian National Library (picture archive and theater collection ) in Vienna and the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg.
Awards
The Royal Imperial Photographic Society took Madame d' Ora in 1905 as the first female member.