Karl Schenker

After the family moved to Lemberg (in the Austro-Hungarian part of the former Poland, now Ukraine), Schenker became a member of the Friends of Artistic Photography around 1900 and has regularly participated in the association's exhibitions from 1904.

Karl Schenker also worked for Ullstein-Verlag, which regularly published photographs by him in its magazine "Die Dame".

and his skills as a painter, Schenker elevated the art of the store dummy to new levels of refinement and verisimilitude.

Some of these images ended up in "Die Dame" and have become a subject of interest in exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale.

In 1925 the couple moved to New York and the photographer Mario von Bucovich took over Schenker's photo studio in Berlin.

At an exhibition dedicated to him in the Gainsborough Galleries, he showed a picture cycle that included portraits of Enrico Caruso, Giacomo Puccini and Gerhart Hauptmann, among others.

After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party, the Ullstein publishing house was "aryanized" and the magazine "Uhu" was discontinued in 1933.

In the meantime, widowed, he had to travel to London to be able to marry Ruth Engel on 10 December 1936, as this was no longer possible in Germany for those classified as Jewish.

On 15 February 1938 Karl Schenker was expelled from the German Reich for "improper conduct in public (road) traffic".

The family emigrated to London, where he opened a photo studio on Regent Street for fashion, portrait and colour photography, retouching, drawing and advertising in 1938.