Margaret Michaelis-Sachs

In addition to her many portraits, her scenes of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona and other places and her images of the Jewish quarter in Kraków in the 1930s are of lasting historical interest.

Collaborating with a group of architects, she produced documentary images of progressive architecture which were published in Catalan journals such as D'Ací i d'Allà and, after the start of the civil war, Nova Ibèria.

[1] In her early life, Michaelis used the sharp focus and sometimes unusual vantage points of modernist photography, while her portraits sought to reveal the psychological essence of her sitters.

Helen Ennis of the National Gallery of Australia stated the images "carry the weight of history, offering a visual trace of a way of life that was destroyed by fascism.

During the Spanish Civil War, she used her Leica camera in Barcelona and other places in Catalonia for the public relations office of the anarchist movement CNT-FAI (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and Federación Anarquista Ibérica).

[4] On the occasion of the Madrid exhibition, Rubio was quoted:[4] "The legacy of the work of Michaelis and Horna is unique, precisely because it shows us the rearguard revolutionary experience, neglected by official historiography, that was instigated by the anarchists of the CNT-FAI.