Gita Lenz

Working primarily from the 1940s through the early 1960s, the American photographer Gita Lenz (1910-2011) made documents of New York street life that won her early recognition and inclusion in two group shows curated by Edward Steichen for The Museum of Modern Art, a three-person show at the Brooklyn Museum and numerous articles and features in photography magazines of the time. Equally given to inflecting her portraiture with hints of social realism one on hand, and surrealism on the other, and also influenced by her close friend Aaron Siskind, Lenz produced abstract compositions, city still lifes, surreal still lifes and intimate portraits. She receded from view in the 1960s as financial demands impeded her practice, but in 2002, a chance meeting with photographer Gordon Stettinius led to the retrieval of this small but charming body of work, and the publication of this superbly printed first monograph.