Elephants with Trainer, Circus, New York
1936
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
overall: 21.1 x 28.2 cm (8 5/16 x 11 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ilse Bing Wolff
Accession Number
2001.147.53
Art Historical Context
Ilse Bing’s 1936 photograph “Elephants with Trainer, Circus, New York” offers a vivid glimpse of urban entertainment during the Great Depression. The image captures the imposing forms of circus elephants alongside their handler, distilling a moment of spectacle and human-animal interaction in one of America’s busiest cities. As a German-born photographer who had recently settled in New York, Bing used her camera to document the energy and contrasts of her new surroundings. Printed as a gelatin silver photograph, the work exemplifies the medium’s ability to render rich tonal gradations and fin...
About the Artist
Ilse Bing
Ilse Bing, born on March 23, 1899, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish merchant family, grew up immersed in music and art. The daughter of Louis Bing and Johanna Elli Bing (née Katz), she pursued studies in mathematics and physics at the University of Frankfurt starting in 1920, later shifting to art history and architecture. A semester at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Institut in...