Biography

Based in Dortmund, Germany, Kretschmer developed a photographic practice in the 1920s that lasted for over fifty years. After a series of apprenticeships, she established a studio in her parents’ fashionable clothing store and soon became the main breadwinner for her artist husband and four children. Kretschmer is celebrated for her sophisticated depiction of women at a time when their public presence in Germany was a topic of intense debate. In both her portraiture and photographs for a thriving newspaper industry she helped construct the vision of the ‘neue Frau’, or New Woman, a stereotype of modern femininity which nonetheless had an impact on many women’s lives.