Three Romanian Photographers under the Communist Regime: Hedy Löffler, Clara Spitzer and Liana Grill
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 2:00 PM
Description
Dr. Adriana Dumitran, Librarian, photo historian, and curator, National Library of Romania, Special Collections Department - Photo Cabinet, Bucharest, Romania
Three Romanian Photographers under the Communist Regime: Hedy Löffler, Clara Spitzer and Liana Grill
In Romania, the history of photography still struggles to gain its recognition at academic level with a little number of practitioners striving hard to establish a corpus of researches on the most important photographers active in Romania from the middle of 19th century to today. It is not a surprise in this context that women photographers are hardly known aside a few names that forged durable careers. From this category I selected three photographers active during the communist period: Hedy Löffler (1911-2007), Clara Spitzer (1918-2013), and Liana Grill (1923-1997). All of them enjoyed great notoriety at the time but in the last three decades the interest is raising toward Löffler and Spitzer through their numerous photobooks published while Grill’s legacy is harder to research and resurface. Grill chose to be mainly a studio photographer with pictures scattered in the pages of magazines and newspapers. All of them enrolled from the beginning in the official photographic movement of the time, Association of Photographer Artists of Romania, established in 1956, which allowed them to exhibit their work at the International Photographic Art Salons of Romania organized, under the patronage of The International Federation of Photographic Art – FIAP, since 1957 and abroad. Their photographs were often awarded nationally and internationally.
Löffler was hugely influenced by the Viennese photographer Trude Fleischman, in whose atelier she was trained in 1929. Balancing between sensitivity and quick photojournalistic approach widely shown in her photobooks she was the most esteemed female photographer. Spitzer was introduced to photography by Löffler and is remembered by her photobooks and theater representations and actors. The least known of them is Grill who opened her own studio in Bucharest in the 1960s, where she photographed the cultural elite of the time.
Dr. Adriana Dumitran (b.1972) is a librarian, photo historian, curator of the Cabinet of Photographs at the National Library of Romania, Special Collections. Fields of interest: history of photography in 19th and 20th century in Romania and the history of press photography. Doctoral thesis on the evolution of press photography in Romania (1860-1919). Co-organizer of the International Conference “Romanian Photography. Local perspectives and European Trends” in 2023 and 2024 at The National Library of Romania. Since 2013 member of the European Society for the History of Photography.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Dumitran, Adriana, "Three Romanian Photographers under the Communist Regime: Hedy Löffler, Clara Spitzer and Liana Grill" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 41.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/41
Three Romanian Photographers under the Communist Regime: Hedy Löffler, Clara Spitzer and Liana Grill
Dr. Adriana Dumitran, Librarian, photo historian, and curator, National Library of Romania, Special Collections Department - Photo Cabinet, Bucharest, Romania
Three Romanian Photographers under the Communist Regime: Hedy Löffler, Clara Spitzer and Liana Grill
In Romania, the history of photography still struggles to gain its recognition at academic level with a little number of practitioners striving hard to establish a corpus of researches on the most important photographers active in Romania from the middle of 19th century to today. It is not a surprise in this context that women photographers are hardly known aside a few names that forged durable careers. From this category I selected three photographers active during the communist period: Hedy Löffler (1911-2007), Clara Spitzer (1918-2013), and Liana Grill (1923-1997). All of them enjoyed great notoriety at the time but in the last three decades the interest is raising toward Löffler and Spitzer through their numerous photobooks published while Grill’s legacy is harder to research and resurface. Grill chose to be mainly a studio photographer with pictures scattered in the pages of magazines and newspapers. All of them enrolled from the beginning in the official photographic movement of the time, Association of Photographer Artists of Romania, established in 1956, which allowed them to exhibit their work at the International Photographic Art Salons of Romania organized, under the patronage of The International Federation of Photographic Art – FIAP, since 1957 and abroad. Their photographs were often awarded nationally and internationally.
Löffler was hugely influenced by the Viennese photographer Trude Fleischman, in whose atelier she was trained in 1929. Balancing between sensitivity and quick photojournalistic approach widely shown in her photobooks she was the most esteemed female photographer. Spitzer was introduced to photography by Löffler and is remembered by her photobooks and theater representations and actors. The least known of them is Grill who opened her own studio in Bucharest in the 1960s, where she photographed the cultural elite of the time.
Dr. Adriana Dumitran (b.1972) is a librarian, photo historian, curator of the Cabinet of Photographs at the National Library of Romania, Special Collections. Fields of interest: history of photography in 19th and 20th century in Romania and the history of press photography. Doctoral thesis on the evolution of press photography in Romania (1860-1919). Co-organizer of the International Conference “Romanian Photography. Local perspectives and European Trends” in 2023 and 2024 at The National Library of Romania. Since 2013 member of the European Society for the History of Photography.
Comments
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