Lotte Jacobi began her photography career at age 12, assisting her father in the darkroom of the family- run portrait studio. During her formal studies at the University of Munich and the Bavarian State Academy of Photography, she became interested in modernist techniques, particularly those of Helmar Lerski and Alfred Stieglitz, and in 1927 she began working professionally. In time, she became one of the most successful portraitists in Berlin. In 1935, as persecution against Jews increased, Lotte Jacobi emigrated to New York City where she opened a portrait studio. Jacobi’s portraits chronicle an era. For over fifty years she photographed people who defined the course of history: W.H. Auden, Martin Buber, Marc Chagall, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Kathe Kollwitz, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Thomas Mann, Eleanor Roosevelt, J.D. Salinger, and Alfred Stieglitz, to name but a few. She also produced triumphant cityscapes, and cameraless experimental photographic work that artist Leo Katz later named ‘photogenics.’ In 1955, Jacobi moved to Deering, New Hampshire where she continued to photograph until her death at 1993.