Yva: Photographies 1925-1938

Before she died in the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II, Else Simon crafted lush, sensual photographs of feminine decadence. An established photographer who worked in Berlin under the name of Yva, Simon took fabulous, fashionable pictures for the magazines of big publishing houses, achieving worldwide respect in during her short career, which lasted from 1925-38. During that time, enfant terrible Helmut Newton was apprenticed to her. This first monograph reconstructs her life’s work and illustrates her inimitable photographic style, which earned her renown in the world of fashion photography, a world mostly dominated by men.