A Woman’s Modernist Frame

Doing Justice to Constance Stuart Larrabee’s Photographs of World War II

Abstract

Constance Stuart Larrabee is one of South Africa’s best-known photographers, having featured in The Family of Man and as the country’s first woman correspondent in World War II. Despite her numerous recent exhibitions, her photography training in Nazi Germany has remained largely unexplored until lately. This article explores some of Larrabee’s photographs taken in mid-1930s and mid-1940s Europe in light of her complicated relationship to the Nazi regime and her modernist photography training.

Keywords
Constance Stuart Larrabee, Photography, South Africa, Modernism, World War II