Description

Living in New York provoked a stylistic shift in Ilse Bing’s work. The city’s “clear and differentiating light, which [made her] see things in sharp detail,” inspired brighter and larger prints. Her compositions separated the forms from each other. Bing attributed these changes to a sense of isolation, which is mirrored in these self-portraits. Living in New York, she said, was like being “in a vacuum . . . looking out on the world as if from inside a space capsule.”