Ise Gropius’s intently modern eye is also seen in photographs by her that have survived. Many of the photos can no longer be clearly attributed either to her or her husband, as they were taken on journeys they made together, without any note being made of which of them took each picture. Only the self-portraits are clearly by her. In 1926–1927, she took a photograph of herself in the bathroom mirror of her Master’s House in Dessau appearing eight times from different angles. The young woman, with a distant gaze, is embracing the camera with her left arm, which is the only part of the real model visible to the viewer. It is only in the mirror images that the identity and position of the photographer are recognizable. The space around her is distorted almost beyond recognition by the mirror refractions.
[AG 2015]
