Elsbeth Juda

• Born — 2 May 1911 • Died — 5 July 2014 • Known for — Photography • Birthplace — Darmstadt, Germany

Juda was born in Darmstadt, Germany on 2 May 1911 to Margarete Neumann (1885–1954) and Julius Joel Goldstein (1873–1929), a philosopher. As a young woman, she moved to Paris, where she found work as secretary to a banker. In 1931, Elsbeth married her childhood love, Hans Peter Juda (1904–1975), and they went to live in Berlin where he was a financial editor at the Berliner Tageblatt. In 1933, they fled Nazi Germany for London with nothing but two suitcases and a violin. Juda studied photography under the Bauhaus photographer Lucia Moholy, the wife of the artist László Moholy-Nagy. At the time Juda and her husband Hans lived in London, where Hans was the publisher of a British trade magazine called The Ambassador, for which László Moholy-Nagy was the Art Director. Lucia Moholy would visit Juda at her home to teach her photography.

Soon after studying photography, Juda did a stint as a "dark room boy" at the Scaioni Studio in London. She later worked as a photographer for advertising companies and fashion magazines, including Harper's Bazaar.

Hans and Elsbeth Juda originally opened a London satellite office for the Dutch trade magazine International Textiles. However, after 1940 when Amsterdam came under control of the Germany army, the magazine proved too difficult to continue. In March 1946, the couple changed the name of the publication to The Ambassador and also changed its focus to British industry, trade and exports. The Ambassador became the voice of British manufacturing for export when the nation's trade was struggling to emerge after 1945. It was published monthly in four languages (English, German, French and Portuguese), had subscribers in over ninety countries, and a circulation of 23,000 copies. Hans Juda coined The Ambassador 's official motto: "Export or Die". Later, as the magazine became an essential marketing and press journal for a Britain desperate to reestablish itself as a global exporter in the post-war era, the phrase would become a mantra for the national manufacturing industry. Throughout their work during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Juda and her husband promoted every facet of British manufacturing, culture and the arts and, in the process, coming into close contact with a host of artists, writers, designers and photographers. The critic Robert Melville described Ambassador as "the most daring and enterprising trade journal ever conceived...no other magazine...has so consistently and brilliantly demonstrated the relevance of works of art to the problems of industrial design." Juda's shoots for The Ambassador combined elements of fashion, modernism and trade. Her series of photos of the famed British model Barbara Goalen modelling Scottish textiles among the heavy machinery of working textile factory are especially representative of her unique visual aesthetics. Together they built a considerable art collection from the many artists that they came in contact with at The Ambassador. It is a much wider circle of friends, however, which would allow Jay to capture every facet of a reemerging post-war Britain through the lens of her camera. The magazine was bought by Thomson Publications in 1961 and continued to be published until 1972. Juda used locations to provide unexpected theatrical backdrops to her work and partook in the new age of jet travel. She was sent to worldwide destinations on assignments for The Ambassador Magazine.

Following the death of her husband in 1975, Juda returned to her early interest in painting, and in the late 1980s took a small studio in Fulham Road, London where she painted and evolved her work in collage. She produced several series of collage works based on her love of the paintings of Henri Matisse and around her fascination with the self-portraits of Rembrandt. An exhibition of her collage works, "Elsbeth Juda: 90 x Rembrandt" was held at England & Co gallery, London in 1994, with the catalogue featuring an introduction by Bryan Robertson.

Juda started themed months called British Fortnights at the American department stores Lord and Taylor and Neiman Marcus in an effort to promote British brands and goods. Juda was initially approached to create a British Fortnight at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas by Stanley Marcus, who was a fan of The Ambassador. Stanley Marcus and Juda eventually become close friends, with Marcus even setting up a trip for Juda to visit the Kodak company in Rochester, New York and the studios of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.