Ellen Auerbach

Ellen Auerbach (née Rosenberg, American, born German, 1906–2004) studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie of her hometown Karlsruhe between 1924 and 1927, while also experimenting with a large format camera. In 1928 she moved to Berlin and took private lessons with Walter Peterhans, where she met Grete Stern with whom she founded the photography and design studio ringl+pit. Grete Stern was ringl, Ellen Auerbach was pit. They ran the studio between 1930 and 1933. After the Nazis came to power, they gave up the studio and Ellen Auerbach left Berlin for Palestine. In Tel Aviv she opened her own studio for photography. When Grete Stern immigrated to Argentina, Ellen Auerbach left Palestine in order to take over her London photography studio, but did not gain a work permit in Great Britain. She married the set designer Walter Auerbach in 1937 whom she had befriended already in Berlin, and immigrated to the US. Auerbach first lived and worked in Philadelphia, and later moved to New York. As a freelance photographer she worked for various magazines, Time magazine among others, but also used film.