Collection of 88 vintage prints – a layout for the book ‘Der Mensch – Mein Bruder’ (Mankind. My Brother) (1958) – includes works from five significant series: Lerski Pictures (1911–1914), Everyday Faces (1928–1931), Arabs and Jews (1931–1935), Metamorphosis Through Light (1936), and Hands (1944).

A compelling retrospective tribute published shortly after Lerski’s death, featuring silvery photogravures, includes essays by renowned writers Berthold Viertel and Arnold Zweig, as well as film director Louis Fürnberg. The tribute declared Lerski “a key influence on Germany’s Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement and a pioneering figure whose ‘eerie and transfixing’ expressionist style made him a leading Weimar cinematographer and portrait photographer.”

Lerski Pictures

Just beginning the way of a photographer Lerski widely uses the theatrical experience and utilizes the effects of forced stagey lighting in the portraits of his friends-actors. Thereafter the unique style of Lerski portrait, uncommon for America of that time, starts coming out: contrasting light that enables to exclude all the individual, uncommon and underlines the universal, archetypical. Later this style was named "Lerski Pictures".

Everyday Faces

After working as a film cameraman for nearly a decade, in 1928 Lerski was preparing to return to portrait photography. Now he was interested in depicting artists, intellectuals, and very important persons from cultural and political spheres. Between 1929 and 1931 his images appeared in 'Vogue', 'Die Dame', 'die neue linie', 'Scherl's Magazine', 'Sport I'm Bild', and 'Die Weite Welt'.

During this period Lerski's studio were frequented not only by celebrities, but also by unknown models. The unknowns were often unemployed workers, sent over by the unemployment office. Thus, he initiated his series 'Köpfe des Altags' (Everyday Faces).

With a cut-out, an optical close-up, he tried to capture the essence of a face: eyes, nose, mouth. However, it was not recognizable features, not the individual appearance of his models with interested Lerski, but rather the undefinable, the "inner structure", which he hoped to "illuminate and penetrate", by utilizing a technical medium, a materialist method of image making.

Arabs and Jews

One of Lerski’s most important series revolved around the portraits from “Arabs and Jews, Palestine.”

After several trips to Palestine beginning in 1931, Helmar Lerski eventually left Berlin and relocated there. He had succeeded in gaining the interest of French publisher Charles Peignot in a new book project, centered on portraying Jewish people as “a document of the Jewish race… of lasting value and authoritative import.”

As Lerski explained, “I want to show only the prototype in all its offshoots, and, what is more, I want to show him so intensely that the prototype is recognizable in all later branches.” Driven by a desire to officially document the Jewish national character in all its complexity, Lerski created a series of Judaic portraits that transcended mere artistic expression, igniting ideological, nationalist, and religious debates.

Despite the controversy, Lerski received strong support from the intellectual elite of the time, including Albert Einstein, who later wrote introductions for Lerski’s Jewish Faces catalog. The series eventually expanded to include Arab Faces and Working Hands, which were exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1945.

In his frequent correspondence with Einstein, Lerski reflected on the condition of the Jewish community. Einstein, who had been aware of Lerski’s concept as early as 1930, wrote to him: “The Jews today are more a national than a religious community. The documentation of this type, as difficult as it may be, thus fulfills an active wish.”

In 1932, Lerski settled in Tel Aviv, where he remained until his return to Europe in 1948. He continued his portraiture work, expanding his concept for Jewish portraits to include the series “Palestinian Portraits” and “Arab Portraits.”

Metamorphosis Through Light

At the beginning of 1936, Helmar Lerski started a new portraiture series. His model was a Jewish worker, who Lerski called 'Uschatz'. In the next three months he produced 175 images of the man remembered as a jack of all trades in Lerski's office. Lerski had conceived his metamorphosis project as early as 1930. When asked about further plans, he responded to the film critic, Hans Feld, that he later wanted to "create a book of portraits of somebody. Fifty images of one and the same person".

Working on the rooftop terrace of Lerski's flat in Tel Aviv in the bright, morning sun, Lerski continually directed the light towards his model's face, using a great number of mirrors. Designated by Lerski as his magnum opus, 'Metamorphosis through Light' was to "furnish proof, that a photographer can create freely, following his mind's eye, like a painter, or sculpture."

Hands Portraits

In 1944, Lerski returned to Hand Portraits, a series he had originally conceived in 1930. These portraits depicted hands in action—though through carefully staged activities. The hand, pars pro toto, was interpreted as a symbol of human creativity, as the tool of the creator. As in the Everyday Faces series, Lerski classified the hands by occupation, aiming to highlight idealized categories of human labor and identity.

In this series Lerski turns the paper into skin: every fold, every muscle and even the bone structure become readable writing. This revelatory shaping of the surface is only possible through light art.

"It's all in the skin, it only depends on where the light falls", said Lerski.