About This Image

Artist's stamp and various notations on verso, including "page 55".

Ergy or Erzsy Landau (1896–1967) was a Hungarian-French humanist photographer.

Born in Budapest, Landau worked in Franz Xaver Setzer's Vienna studio and then in Rudolf Dührkoop's studio in Berlin. She had photographed the German writer Thomas Mann and her painter/photographer friend, László Moholy-Nagy, whom she introduced to the medium.

In May 1922 she emigrated to Paris, where she established herself as a portrait photographer. Landau brought the first Rolleiflex to France. Nora Dumas joined Landau's studio in 1929, and Ylla in 1932.

Landau exhibited in the salons of the day and had work published in VU. Her advertising photographs and her images of the city (1920–1930) brought her great success, particularly her female nudes with sharp lighting and great plasticity, which appeared regularly in magazines such as Arts et métiers graphiques (1936). A specialist in photos and portraits of children–although she declined the Daily Mirror's offer to photograph 365 expressions of a young girl's face–she illustrated several books on the subject, such as Play and Toys in the Nursery Years (1938, in collaboration with Beatrix Tudor-Hart).

Landau met Charles Rado in 1933. Rado founded the photo press agency Rapho with Landau, Ylla, Brassaï, and Nora Dumas, but was forced to close the agency during World War II. Landau had met Raymond Grosset on holiday in 1930, and introduced him to the other Hungarian photographers in Paris. After World War II Landau encouraged Grosset to restart Rapho.

Landau died in Paris in 1967.

Her work is in the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Hungarian Museum of Photography, the Centre Georges Pompidou/Musee, among others.

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