Nini and Carry Hess - Russian dancer Sascha Leontjew

A rare original vintage gelatin silver print of famous dancer Sascha Leontjew, by Nini and Carry Hess, credited on the front in lower right


AGE: c. 1930
PROCESS: vintage gelatin silver print on fiber-based paper
DIMENSIONS: c. 13.9 x 8.9 cm
CONDITION: overall very good – all imperfections as illustrated.
The sisters Nini (born August 21, 1884; died 1943 in Auschwitz) and Carry Hess (born November 11, 1889; died 1957 in Chur, Switzerland) were among the most significant photographers of the Weimar Republic. Because of their Jewish heritage, both photographers were persecuted by the National Socialists, and their work and lives were destroyed. Nini and Carry Hess photographed numerous celebrities and artists, including Thomas and Katia Mann, the painter Max Beckmann, the writer Alfred Döblin, the psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, and the composer Paul Hindemith. Their subjects also included famous stage stars such as the dancers Mary Wigman and Anna Pavlova.

Sascha Leontjew, born Mikhail Katz 1897 in Riga – 25 August 1942 in Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria), was a Russian dancer. From around 1920, Sascha Leontjew lived primarily in Berlin and Vienna. In 1928, Leontyev was appointed ballet master, principal dancer, and head of the ballet school at the Vienna State Opera.He was in a long-term relationship with the German-Austrian *Burgtheater* actor Alfred Gerasch (1877–1955); around 1935, the two lived together at Schottengasse 3A in Vienna.[5] As a Jewish and homosexual man, Leontjew found the political developments in Germany increasingly threatening. On August 18, 1942, he was deported from Vienna to the Mauthausen concentration camp as a Jewish prisoner,[6] where he survived for only one week. He was murdered on August 25, 1942.