Rollei Twin Lens Reflex Photographers - Digitized Collections
The photographers featured here have used their twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras almost exclusively. Each photographer gives us a glimpse into a way of life that in many ways today has all but vanished.
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Fritz Henle Robert McCabe Hedda Morrison
Fritz Henle (1909-1993)
Beginning a career that spanned six decades in Germany in 1928, Fritz Henle traveled through the Mediterranean, India, China, and Japan in the pre-war 1930s, documenting those travels with his trusted Rolleiflex camera, before emigrating to the United States in 1936. Henle was at once a successful freelance photojournalist whose work took him to Asia in the pre-war 30s, later to Mexico, Paris, throughout the USA, and to the Caribbean in the late 40s, where he traveled the islands before making his home on St. Croix in 1958.
Fritz Henle Collection c1936-1945 is a collection of photographs taken by Fritz Henle during his stay at Dartington with the Ballett Jooss. Also includes a set of photographs of the Ballett Jooss that Fritz Henle sent to the Elmhirsts after the troop moved to California. This is part of a collection of photographs in the Dartington Historical Archives at The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon United Kingdom.
Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty February 3, 2009 - August 2, 2009 is a past exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. This retrospective exhibition features a broad range of Henle's work including images of 1930s New York City, Mexico and Paris; innovative nudes; and portraits of famous personalities. The exhibition features approximately 125 vintage and modern prints and numerous artifacts documenting Henle's career.
Robert A. McCabe
Robert McCabe was born in Chicago in 1934 and grew up in the New York City area. His first photographs of Greece were the result of a visit in 1954 while he was an undergraduate at Princeton University. He returned in 1955 and 1957 via freighter from the U.S. and traveled extensively in the Aegean, shooting with a Rolleiflex and Plus-X film.
Robert McCabe's photographs on his Web site speak eloquently of the 1950s, with familiar cityscapes and timeless monuments. His photographs depict a way of life that today has all but vanished.
Hedda Morrison (1908-1991)
Hedda Hammer Morrison was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1908. In 1929 she enrolled at the Bavarian State Institute for Photography in Munich where she studied for three years. Two years after graduation Hedda, like many German artists and intellectuals, made plans to leave Germany which was coming increasingly under Nazi control. She answered an advertisement in a German photographic journal and secured a job as manager of the Hartung’s Photo Shop in Peking. From 1933 Hedda Morrison managed the German-owned commercial photographic studio in the Legation quarter which had a well-established clientele of customers including diplomats and resident foreigners. After her contract expired in 1938, she continued to work in Peking as a freelance photographer.
Hedda Morrison Photographs of China 1933 - 1946 documents a rare, detailed look into China’s past. The architecture, streetscapes, clothing, religious practices and crafts have all but disappeared from modern Beijing (formerly Peking).
The Harvard Yenching Library holds almost 5,000 of Morrison's photographs and 10,000 negatives, which she took and mounted in 28 albums, whilst she was resident in China from 1933 to 1946. The contents of these albums have been catalogued and digitized and can be viewed in VIA (Visual Information Access), the union catalogue of visual resources at Harvard College Library. A page is provided on search strategies. This Web site also provides a chronology of the photographer, together with publications on Hedda Morrison and a selected bibliography of her published photographs.
The Hedda Morrison photograph collection in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Australia primarily comprises 349 exhibition prints that were made by Hedda after she settled in Canberra in 1967. The prints include photographs that she took in China, Sarawak and Australia, where Hedda lived for extended periods, as well as other countries that she visited for shorter periods.
The collection also includes a group of negatives of the Trachenfest folk festival taken by Hedda in Stuttgart in 1931. This Web site also provides images of Hedda and her husband taken by other photographers in Germany and China. A biography and chronology for Hedda Morrison, together with information on exhibitions of her work is also provided.
Clicking on each image provides a description, a statement of the picture‘s significance, production and history notes.
Hedda Morrison's Hong Kong photographs 1946 - 1947 taken with 1930s Rollei cameras captured a Hong Kong now long gone. For six months, cameras in hand, Hedda Morrison roamed Hong Kong’s streets and districts, coasts and countryside. In six months she photographed virtually every aspect of local life. These compelling images of the period in Hong Kong immediately after World War II give us a look back at the city before explosive growth transformed it into an economic powerhouse.
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Document updated 2010 January 4