Tatiana Barbakoff, a Jewish ballet dancer from the USSR, was famous for her expressionist dancing which embraced her Russian and Chinese mixed heritage. Sometime between 1925 and 1932, Gerty Simon photographed her in her studio in Berlin. Like Gerty Simon, Barbakoff left Germany in 1933 after the Nazi Party’s ascension to power. Tatiana Barbakoff lived in France until her arrest in Nice in January 1944 and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz on 3 February 1944 on Convoy No. 67. She was murdered upon arrival on the 6 February 1944.
The quality of the photographs and significance of many of Gerty Simon’s sitters, as well as her story of displacement from Germany and re-establishment in Britain meant that, for The Wiener Library – the world’s oldest collector of material on the Nazi era – this was a particularly compelling collection.
To find out more about this exhibition, please visit: https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/Gerty-Simon
‘Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon’ will be on show at The Wiener Library from 30 May – 15 October 2019.
Alexander Iolas (1907-1987), c. 1925-1933. Ballet dancer, later a gallerist © The Bernard Simon Estate, Wiener Library Collections