Background
Johanna Alexandra Jacobi (Lotte Jacobi) was born on August 17, 1896 in Torun, Poland. She was the eldest of three children. The name "Lotte" was a nickname given to her by her father.
Johanna Alexandra Jacobi (Lotte Jacobi) was born on August 17, 1896 in Torun, Poland. She was the eldest of three children. The name "Lotte" was a nickname given to her by her father.
Johanna Jacobi studied literature and art history at the Royal Academy (now Königliche Akademie zu Posen) in Poznań from 1912 to 1917 and completed formal artistic training at the Bavarian State Academy of Photography and the University of Munich (1925 - 1927).
Johanna Jacobi entered the family photography business in 1927. During this same period she began her professional work as a photographer, represented by Schostal Photo Agency (Agentur Schostal) and she also produced four films, the most important being Portrait of the Artist, a study of Josef Scharl.
From October 1932 to January 1933, she traveled to the Soviet Union, in particular to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, taking photographs of what she saw. Johanna Jacobi returned to Berlin in February 1933, one month after Hitler came to power. As persecution against Jews increased, she left Germany with her son, arriving in September 1935 in New York City. Nearly all of her early work was lost when she immigrated. Jacobi and her sister, Ruth Jacobi Roth, opened a studio in Manhattan. During this time, she continued portrait photography at her studio, while also experimenting with photogenics: a cameraless photography in which she exposed photosensitive paper to light to create abstract images.
In 1955, Johanna Jacobi left New York with her son and daughter-in-law and moved to Deering, New Hampshire, a move that changed her life. There she opened a new studio, where she both continued her own work and displayed works by other artists.
Johanna Jacobi died May 6, 1990 at the age of 93. She bequeathed 47,000 negatives to the Lotte Jacobi Archives established at the University of New Hampshire. This record of 20th century history revealed in the faces of the artists, world leaders, intelligentsia, and ordinary people of America and Europe.
Peter Lorre, actor
Lotte Lenya, actress
Robert Frost in Ripton, Vermont
Anna Mae Wong, actress
Leo Katz, artist
Albert Einstein, physicist
Louis Douglas, dancer
Marc Chagall and daughter Ida, New York
Beate Sauerlander, Amityville
Käthe Kollwitz, artist
Head of a dancer
Alfred Stieglitz, photographer
Lil Dagover, actress
Johanna Jacobi became interested in politics and was a fervent Democrat, representing New Hampshire at the Democratic National Convention in 1980.
In 1916 Lotte Jacobi married Fritz Honig, and a year later she gave birth to a son, John. The marriage did not last, and in 1924 they divorced. In 1940, she married Erich Reiss, a distinguished German publisher and writer, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1951.