Lehnert and Landrock

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Photographer: Rudolph Lehnert (1878 - 1948), born Grossaupa, Bohemia, trained at Vienna Institute of Graphic Arts.

Ernst Heinrich Landrock, business partner (1878 - 1966).

According to Joseph Geraci,[Geraci, J. 'Lehnert & Landrock of North Africa' in History of Photography, vol.27, no.3, p.294] Landrock met Lehnert in Switzerland. His admiration for Lehnert's photography lead them to establish a photographic business in Tunis in the early twentieth century at around 1910. The business proved successful, though it was temporarily suspended when Lehnert was interned during the First World War. In the 1920s they resumed their work in Cairo, where their studio still exists at 44 Sharia Street. They listed themselves as postcard publisher's rather than photographers, presumably so they could concentrate on the romaticized images of the Middle East that they prefered to produce. These they published as postcards, larger souvenir photographs for albums and as reproductions in books. In 1930, Lehnert seems to have returned to Tunis, opening a studio independently at 43, Avenue Jules-Ferry. In 1985, over forty years after Lehnert had retired to Carthage in 1939 and Landrock had retired to Germany, their collection of negatives were given to the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne.

Jaconson, K., Odalisques & Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839-1925,London, 2007, p.248