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Lot Essay
Helmar Lerski emigrated from Zurich to the United States in 1888. In the 1910s, he started working as a photographer and, notably, was a cameraman for important European films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis. In the 1920s Lerski was a dedicated portrait photographer and the majority of his professional output was made after emigrating to Palestine in 1932.
Following his Arabs and Jews series (see lot 148), Helmar Lerski began work on his best known series Metamorphosis Through Light, a group of 137 portraits of a Swiss engineer taken on the roof of his Tel Aviv studio. The artist regarded this series as his finest, and relied on sunlight as a tool to transform each portrait into a series of strikingly different images. The altered angles of Lerski’s lens and reflective mirrors metamorphose the subject into 137 different iterations of himself, showing the significance of light as a photographic aid. This series is represented within the institutional collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Following his Arabs and Jews series (see lot 148), Helmar Lerski began work on his best known series Metamorphosis Through Light, a group of 137 portraits of a Swiss engineer taken on the roof of his Tel Aviv studio. The artist regarded this series as his finest, and relied on sunlight as a tool to transform each portrait into a series of strikingly different images. The altered angles of Lerski’s lens and reflective mirrors metamorphose the subject into 137 different iterations of himself, showing the significance of light as a photographic aid. This series is represented within the institutional collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.