Lot 42 Dα

After having finished her studies at the “Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie”, the Stuttgart-born Hedda Hammer initially worked as assistant to Adolf Lazi. Due to the political climate in Germany, she applied in 1933 for a job at a photo studio in Beijing which she ran until 1938. During these years at “Hartung's photo shop” as well as during the following period that she spent in Beijing working as a freelance photographer until her marriage in 1946, she took several thousand photographs that record and document life in China's cultural centre. Her images of daily street scenes in Beijing and its surroundings, of temples, religious practices and handicrafts were published in numerous books on China. The pictorial quality of the images as well as the forthright view of the European photographer on a, to her up until then, foreign society, which becomes evident especially in her portraits, let the photographs of Hedda Hammer Morrison appear as remarkable documents of Chinese culture of that time. The original prints were sold by her either individually or in thematic albums. Today the Harvard-Yenching Library in Cambridge, USA, holds a comprehensive collection of prints and negatives which can be viewed online.