Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, August 3, 2023: Dora Kallmus, an Austrian fashion and portrait photographer (#1870)

Dora Kallmus (1881 – 1963), also known as Madame D'Ora or Madame d'Ora, was an Austrian fashion and portrait photographer. She was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family. Her father was a lawyer.Her sister, Anna, was born in 1878 and deported in 1941 during the Holocaust. Although her mother, Malvine (née Sonnenberg), died when she was young, her family remained an important source of emotional and financial support throughout her career.

She and her sister, Anna, were both "well-educated," spoke English and French, and played the piano. They had also traveled throughout Europe.

She became interested in the photography field while assisting the son of the painter Hans Makart, and in 1905 she was the first woman to be admitted to theory courses at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Training Institute). That same year she became a member of the Association of Austrian photographers. At that time she was also the first woman allowed to study theory at the Graphischen Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, which in 1908 granted women access to other courses in photography.

In 1907, she established her own studio with Arthur Benda in Vienna called the Atelier d’Ora or Madame D'Ora-Benda. The name was based on the pseudonym "Madame d'Ora", which she used professionally. D'ora and Benda operated a summer studio from 1921 to 1926 in Karlsbad, Germany, and opened another gallery in Paris in 1925. The Karlsbad gallery allowed D'Ora to cater to the "international elite vacationers." These same clients later convinced her to open her Paris studio.

Between 1917 and 1927, D'Ora's studio "produced" photographs for Ludwig Zwieback & Bruder, a Viennese department store.

She was represented by Schostal Photo Agency (Agentur Schostal) and it was her intervention that saved the agency's owner after his arrest by the Nazis, enabling him to flee to Paris from Vienna.

Her subjects included Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Tamara de Lempicka, Alban Berg, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, and other dancers, actors, painters, and writers.
Personal life

In 1919, D’Ora converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. She died on 28 October 1963. Four years prior, she had sustained injuries after being hit by a motorcycle in Paris, resulting in her returning to Vienna. D'ora lived her final years and passed in the same house that had been forcibly sold under the Nazis before being returned to her family.

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Madame D'Ora Self-portrait, circa 1929

Gustav Klimt, circa 1907

Alban Berg, circa 1909

Helene Jamrich with a hat from Zwieback, designed by Rudolf Krieser, circa 1909

ileva Roller, circa 1910

The Zwieback Fashion House, circa 1913

Countess von Haugwitz-Széchényi, Countess Khevenhüller-Fürstenberg and
Countess Marie Choloniewska serving in the Red Cross
during the First World War, circa 1914