Lot Essay
A presentation album, compiled by Lerski using images from his series of 175 photographs of one sitter, a young Jewish worker, Mr. Uschatz. The photographs were made during a three-month period in 1936 and were first exhibited then in a gallery in Jerusalem. In the same year a selection of seventy images was also shown in Vienna. Lerski spent a few months in Britain in 1938, during which time he showed twelve slides of images from the series as a short sequence before the main feature at the Academy Cinema, London over a period of five weeks. Prints of the images were also exhibited on the cinema foyer's walls. The poet and government official, Humbert Wolfe, wrote of the work at this time "He [Lerski] based his discovery on two propositions; first that in any human face, if properly observed, there could be found the material of all emotions, and therefore, a whole gallery of human beings; secondly that, without retouching up of the plate, an inspired manipulation of light could, and would, reveal in the same perhaps apparently insignificant features a Judas Iscariot, a Hannibal, a St. Francis of Assisi, and a beggar at the street-corner."
Lerski, aged 65 and with a career as a photographer and cinematographer, photographed his sitter on a rooftop patio manipulating groups of mirrors to achieve the lighting effects he needed.
This selection, which is likely to be unique, was made for Lerski's friend and promoter in London, the author and director, Berthold Viertel.
Lerski, aged 65 and with a career as a photographer and cinematographer, photographed his sitter on a rooftop patio manipulating groups of mirrors to achieve the lighting effects he needed.
This selection, which is likely to be unique, was made for Lerski's friend and promoter in London, the author and director, Berthold Viertel.