Studio Manasse

…Olga Solarics (1896-1969) and her husband Adorja'n von Wlassics (1893-1946) ran the Manasse' Foto-Salon in Vienna from 1922-1938. Olga seems to have been the one interested in the photographic nude. She (or they) exhibited at the 1st International Salon of Nude Photography in Paris in 1933…”

“…Studio Manasse, which flourished in the 1930s in Vienna, captured morethan just portrait photography bursting with erotic charge; it immortalized the fluid state of beauty and the “new woman”: confident in her own sexuality as she struggled to redefine her position in the modern world. Each picture offers a conflict of concepts, as provocative poses are presented in such traditional roles that the cynicism intended renders them humorously absurd . Adorjan and Olga Wlassics, a husband-and-wife team, founded Studio Manasse in the early 1920s. The first Manasse illustrations appeared in magazines in 1924, a booming industry at the time, as the movie industry skyrocketed and publications aimed to satisfy a public obsessed with glimpses into the world of glamour. Attracting some of the leading ladies of the time from film, theater, opera, and vaudeville,Studio Manasse created masterpieces, employing all the techniques of makeup, retouching, and overpainting to keep their subjects happy while upholding an uncompromised artistic vision.Molded bodies were dreams with alabaster or marbel-like skin; backgrounds were staged so that the photographer could control each environment. And as their art found a home, the Wlassics found themselves able to afford a pattern of life similar to those reflected in their photographs. Their clients ran the gamut, from the advertising agencies to private buyers. When the Wlassics opened a new studio ni Berlin, their business in Vienna was managed more and more by associates, until 1937, when the firm’s name was sold to another photographer. Adorjan passed away just ten years later; Olga remarried and died in 1969…”
text and some of the images courtesy of
historical ziegfeld
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billyjane &
drake caperton
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