"IN A SINGLE SHOT JACOBI DID THE UNEXPECTED": RARE GELATIN SILVER PRINT OF EINSTEIN, SIGNED BY LOTTE JACOBI

(EINSTEIN, Albert) JACOBI, Lotte. Photograph signed. Einstein. Deering, New Hampshire, circa 1975. Gelatin silver print (7 by 9-1/2 inches), signed on lower corner of print recto; floated, matted and framed, entire piece measures 14-1/2 by 17 inches. $7500.

Gelatin silver print of Einstein, signed in pencil by Lotte Jacobi in the lower right corner, a rare impression of her famous 1938 image of Einstein seated in a rumpled leather jacket.

"In 1938 Albert Einstein had been contacted by Life magazine, and he agreed in principle to sit for a 'photo story.' His only stipulation was that 'Miss Jacobi' be the photographer… Jacobi chose to shoot the pictures at Einstein's residence in Princeton… [creating] the most striking ever taken of Einstein" (Schuyler, Lotte Jacobi). "Clad in a leather jacket, buttoned neatly to his neck, with his signature disheveled hair, Einstein is captured in a private moment, deep in thought… Nothing in the composition prompts viewer reverence or betrays deferential treatment by the artist. Rather, in a single shot Jacobi did the unexpected: she humanized a man whom America and the world revered… [This] did not fit the narrowly defined standards of commercial photography, which was more interested in promoting the celebrity of the sitter. For this very reason Life magazine, which had commissioned the Einstein assignment, decided not to publish this… By focusing on the very qualities that defined the inner nature of her subject, Jacobi defied the prevailing aesthetics of contemporary photographic journalism" (Sundstrom, 2). This now iconic image of Einstein was exhibited at MoMA's 1942 exhibit "20th Century Portraits." See Wise, 100; Moriarty, 66.

A fine signed print.