ringl + pit Ellen Auerbach, American, b. Germany, 1906-2004; and Grete Stern Argentinean, b. Germany, 1904-1992. Ringl + pit was an avant-garde commercial studio in Berlin operated by Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern during the early 1930s. Auerbach (born Ellen Rosenberg in Karlsruhe) had studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe (1924-27) and the Kunstschule in Stuttgart (1928) before moving to Berlin in 1928 to study photography with Walter Peterhans. Stern (born in Wuppertal-Elberfeld) had studied graphic arts at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Stuttgart (1924-27) before studying with Peterhans, first as a private pupil in Berlin and then as a student at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where Peterhans had begun teaching in 1929. Stern and Rosenberg met through Peterhans. After Stern bought their former teacher's Berlin studio in 1930, they opened ringl + pit (a moniker derived from their childhood nicknames), specializing in portraiture, still life, advertising photography, and magazine illustration. The studio soon became known as one of the most innovative in Germany, producing clear and precise images in the spirit of the "new photography." Their work was also notable for its imaginative use of surrealist motifs and critical humor. Photographs by ringl + pit appeared in such periodicals as Gebrauchsgraphik (Commercial Art) and Cahiers d'art as well as Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur (New Women's Clothing and Women's Culture), while the firm's advertising clients ranged from manufacturers of hair lotion and cigarettes to distributors of petroleum products. The ringl + pit studio closed in 1933 following Hitler's rise to power. Stern immigrated to London, where she worked as a freelance photographer before moving to Buenos Aires in 1936 with her husband, photographer Horacio Coppola. She worked for a number of years as a photographer for the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (1956-70) and did freelance work for architects, publishers, artists, and art galleries. In the early 1960s, she undertook an extensive documentation project of Indian culture in Gran Chaco, Argentina. Rosenberg immigrated to Palestine, where she photographed for w.i.z.o. (Women's International Zionist Organization). In 1936, she moved to London to take over Stern's photographic studio but, unable to obtain a work permit, left for the United States the following year. That same year she married Walter Auerbach. During the late 1930s and early 1940s she photographed a private print collection in Philadelphia and experimented with infrared and ultraviolet fluorescence photography. After moving to New York City in the mid-1940s, she worked as a freelance photographer. From 1946-48, Auerbach made film and photographic studies of babies and small children for the Menninger Foundation, a research institute based in Kansas, and in 1955-56 traveled through Mexico with Eliot Porter taking color photographs of church interiors for the book Mexican Churches. In 1965, she began work as an educational therapist for children with learning difficulties at the Educational Institute for Learning and Research in New York, a job she continued until 1986. Auerbach lives in New York; Stern lives in Buenos Aires. M.M. Source: Cleveland Museum

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