Machen Sie mich schön, Madame d'Ora!

In the studio of d'Oras, the greats of the art and fashion world, politics, and glamour of the 20th century stood before the camera. The first painter she photographed was Gustav Klimt in 1908, and the last was Pablo Picasso in 1956. The Rothschild family was among those who posed, as well as Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker, Marc Chagall, and Maurice Chevalier. However, from the fame of a successful fashion photographer in Vienna and Paris, it was only a step to the destitution of a disenfranchised Jewish woman in hiding from the persecution of German occupying soldiers in France. Just having escaped, the society portraitist turned her sharp yet empathetic gaze after 1945 to the nameless returnees from concentration camps and to the livestock of the Paris markets. Dora Kallmus' portraits powerfully convey the dazzling heights and brutal lows of the 20th century.