Bodenwieser dancers performing Cradle Song of Mother Earth / Wiegenlied der Mutter Erde, 1950. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Gelatin silver prints. National Library of Australia (no. 61 and 62 MS 9263/2/23).
Bodenwieser dancers performing Cradle Song of Mother Earth / Wiegenlied der Mutter Erde, 1950. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Gelatin silver prints. National Library of Australia (no. 61 and 62 MS 9263/2/23).
Women photographers, professional and amateur in the 1860s-1950s, are the focus of a new book by Lissa Mitchell, curator of historical photography at Te Papa, revealing the fascinating and untold stories of artists and makers and their subjects.
Lily Byttiner, who operated as Bettina Studios in the Lewis Eady Building in Queen St, Auckland, from 1939, was a German of Jewish descent who arrived in New Zealand with her husband in 1937 on a refugee permit granted in Berlin. She was initially employed doing processing work in Kodak’s Auckland photographic workrooms and then for photographic stock dealers D.G. Begg Ltd, before deciding to open her own studio. Byttiner was an experienced photographer: she had trained at the Reimann School of Art and Design in the 12 months before she left Germany (the school was subsequently relocated to London in 1937 to escape Nazism), and she worked as an assistant in the Berlin studio of the renowned photojournalist Kathe Augenstein.
Street and so-called “candid” – or hand-held – photography at events was vital to Byttiner’s business. She had no family left in Germany; her mother had died in 1926, and her father, formerly a doctor in Berlin, was a refugee living in reduced circumstances in New York and requiring her financial support; she sent him £2,10 shillings a month. Candid photography generated business for Byttiner’s fledging studio and saved her the cost of advertising.
In the Auckland Domain Wintergardens, about 1950. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Hand-coloured gelatin silver print. Collection of Peter Ireland, Gisborne.
In January 1941, when Byttiner was ordered by the Justice Minister “not to use or employ any camera outside her studio by any means direct or indirect”, she argued she could not survive in business by taking photographs for clients who only came to the studio. To get around the order, Byttiner employed an Australian man to do street and candid photography for her on commission. He attended weddings, dances and parties, and returned exposed films to her for processing and sale. When the police discovered this manoeuvre, Byttiner was told to end the arrangement. In July, however, she obtained permission to take photographs “at any dance, party or wedding” provided she notified the authorities of her movements and the details of the events she wished to attend.
In September 1941, Byttiner appeared before the Aliens Appeal Tribunal to argue for the importance of candid work to her capacity to make a living. Over a period of three months in 1941 she had earned a little more than £118: studio work earnings of just over £82 plus takings from candid work of just over £36. After expenses were deducted, she had made just over £51.128. The official report of the hearing described Byttiner as making “an unfavourable impression” and depicted her as “evasive, untruthful, selfish, destitute of any real feeling of gratitude to this country or of any feeling of loyalty to any country”. She was the “sort of person who, if she were in financial need or harboured a grievance against this country, might easily be made use of by an enemy agent to our national disadvantage”. Surprisingly, in light of such views, the tribunal allowed Byttiner to continue to work, but she was designated as a Class B alien. In the event of a national emergency, such as an invasion, she would be interned as a prisoner of war.
Jean Raymond (left) and Eileen Kramer (right) in costume for the Bodenwieser Ballet’s O World, 1947. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Gelatin silver prints. Collection of Eileen Kramer, Sydney.
Byttiner’s unconventionality exacerbated the climate of suspicion that surrounded her, and her marriage to Polish-born Rudolf Byttiner appears to have soured after she opened the Bettina Studio. During 1939 and 1940 she was working long hours establishing the business and running classes for amateur photographers in her studio on week nights, despite a resentful Rudolf wanting her “home in time to cook my meals”. He felt that his £5 a week pay as a freezing worker in Ōtāhuhu was enough for them both to live on. Byttiner had been having an affair with a “Romanian doctor”, and in 1940 she filed for divorce.
The affair and the divorce, seen then as shameful, seemed to mark Byttiner out for extra suspicion by the police, who considered her a risk potentially requiring constant surveillance or internment. The New Zealand authorities appeared to believe that marriage to a British subject and the birth of children would serve to cure such undesirable behaviour as defiance, assertiveness or promiscuity, which they regarded as characteristic traits in refugee women. Marriage would surely also mean that a woman no longer needed to work. As Rudolf Byttiner told the police in December 1940, “My wife is a businesswoman, and when I asked her to give up the business she objected ... this was the main reason for our differences and we frequently quarrelled over this matter.”
Bodenwieser dancers performing Cradle Song of Mother Earth / Wiegenlied der Mutter Erde, 1950. In the photograph, from left to right, are Jean Raymond, Moira Claux and Elaine Vallance. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Gelatin silver prints. National Library of Australia (no. 61 and 62 MS 9263/2/23).
Byttiner, who did not remarry after her divorce, was granted naturalisation as a New Zealand citizen in 1947. She had spent the remainder of the war living quietly under the restrictions imposed on her and was described to police by those who knew her as a “reliable and reputable” member of the Jewish refugee community, generous and well-liked. After the war she abandoned plans to visit the United States to update her photographic skills in favour of expanding her business by opening a second studio in the Auckland Gas Company building in Northcroft St Takapuna.
Byttiner died in January 1967. Her will directed that her assets be sold for the benefit of the Auckland Jewish Congregation. The fate of the contents of her studio, which may have formed a very valuable social and cultural archive, is unknown. Despite her hard-won success in operating two profitable and innovative studios for more than 20 years, Byttiner’s legacy is largely lost, perhaps because she had no heirs. The status of some of Byttiner’s clients makes the loss of this collection even more acute. Refugees and people displaced by the war often made their way to the Bettina Studio to be photographed. Some, such as the celebrated German Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl, were living in Auckland, but others sought her out when they travelled from Australia. When the Bodenwieser Ballet was in Auckland in 1947, for example, the Australian dancer and choreographer Eileen Kramer had a portrait made by Byttiner. The ballet was formed in Sydney in 1939 by Gertrude Bodenwieser, a dancer and choreographer who pioneered the expressive dance movement and was also a refugee from Austria.
Edited extract from Through Shaded Glass: Women and photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860-1960 (Te Papa Press, $75), available now.
