Photographer and photojournalist Lotte Jacobi (August 17, 1896 – May 6, 1990) was best known for portraits of Germany’s leading theater actors, artists, writers, and political figures. She also photographed the local landscape and architecture and produced stunning documentary images of cities and people in Germany and the Soviet Union. In response to the encroaching danger of the Nazi regime, Jacobi left Germany for New York in September 1935. Within weeks she was again photographing the world’s leading artists, dancers, and writers. Among her most significant works from the 1940s and 1950s were her abstract, camera less images known as “photogenics.”

Jacobi left New York for rural New Hampshire in 1955. She had grown uneasy in the city following the death of her second husband Erich Reiss in 1951, and she was eager to pursue some of her environmental interests in the woods of New England. In Deering, Jacobi continued to develop as a fine art photographer. In 1963, she opened a gallery to exhibit the work of local and international artists. In the last decades of her life, Jacobi received numerous international, national, and state honors for her artistic achievements. Lotte Jacobi died in 1990 in Concord, New Hampshire.