Anna Riwkin-Brick

Anna Riwkin-Brick born Anna Riwkin (, Surazh, Chernigov Governorate, Russia – Tel Aviv 19 December 1970) was a Russian-born Swedish photographer.

Early life Anna Riwkin was born in Surazh in the Russian Empire into a Jewish family and came to Sweden, at the age of 7, with her parents in 1914. Her father Scholom Sender (Alexander) Riwkin, born in Gomel in 1878, had studied philosophy in Heidelberg before becoming a paper manufacturer, and published philosophical pamphlets in his youth. Her mother was Frida Perlman (1881–1944). The family were part of the Ashkenazi Jewish community. Anna was affectionately nicknamed Anusjka and Channo within the family.

In 1915, the Riwkin family moved to Sweden, where Anna grew up with her siblings, including her sister Honjah (later the writer Eugénie Söderberg) and her brother Josef Riwkin. For a period, the children were tutored by the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin while living in Stockholm. From 1919 to 1922, Anna and her siblings lived with their mother in Swinemünde in northern Germany (now Świnoujście, Poland) before returning to Stockholm, where Anna attended the progressive Whitlockska samskolan and studied ballet for three years. She danced professionally for some time before an injured foot put an early stop to her career.

Career

Photographer She was employed as an assistant to the court photographer Moisé Benkow in 1927, and started her own portrait and dance photography studio in Stockholm in 1928. Around this time, she also worked as a theater and dance photographer, and her portraits began appearing in the radical cultural magazine Spektrum, founded by her brother Josef Riwkin. Her photography was closely linked with Stockholm's intellectual and artistic circles in the late 1920s and 1930s, where figures such as Karin Boye, Gunnar Ekelöf, and Erik Mesterton were prominent contributors.

She married Daniel Brick the editor of the Swedish-Jewish Zionist periodical Judisk Krönika, translator of Russian, Yiddish and Czech, in 1929, and marketed her work by displaying portraits of young writers and intellectuals from among her husband's acquaintances. and illustrated a book on Swedish dance, Svensk Danskonst, published in 1932 and in the following year her photographs were exhibited in the international exhibition Dance and Movement in Paris.

In the summer of 1933, she visited Paris with her friend Thora Dardel and photographed leading figures in the surrealist movement including Jean Arp, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Man Ray. A famous group photo of these artists was taken by Riwkin but later misattributed to Ernst.

Photojournalism From the 1930s, Riwkin added journalistic work to her repertoire, collaborating on several books with the journalist Elly Jannes and the writer Ivar Lo-Johansson. Her first one-person show was held in 1936 in Kungsgatan in 1936. is typical of work she was later to publish in children's books, while the other, used to illustrate the idea of protest in the exhibition, is cropped image of a woman animatedly relating a story to neighbours from the couple's book Israel.

Children's picture books with photography In 1950, with the aim of promoting tolerance by introducing children from different countries to each other's lives, and international understanding through children's literature that would also be read by adults, Riwkin-Brick was commissioned by the UNESCO to make a photo book about the Sámi people. She persuaded Elly Jannes, a journalist for the journal Vi, to write the text for Vandrande by ('Wandering Village', also released as 'Nomads of the North'), published in 1950. Anna Riwkin-Brick took many photos of a Sámi family's little girl Elle Kari that were not included in the Vandrande by edition, and Elly Jannes suggested they make another photo book about Elle Kari and to aim it at a child audience which was published in 1951.

It was the first Swedish picture book with photos of everyday life of a child in a continuous story, and the first of many such books that the photographer was to make. It was a success. Translated into eighteen languages in editions with high print runs; 25,000 copies were printed for the first edition released in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Riwkin-Brick issued a series of 19 children's books (Children's Everywhere), each focusing on the everyday life of a child in a particular place or country. For nine of these books, Astrid Lindgren wrote the text

Photo agency In 1960 Riwkin established the photo agency Full Hand with Gösta Glass, Gustav Hansson, Bo Dahlin and Rolf Blomberg. 14 February – 23 May 2004

Publications

Publications about Anna Riwkin-Brick

Catalogue of an exhibition at Fotografiska museet, 10 December 1977 – 5 March 1978. If she has a camera in her hand, she is not afraid (Tel Aviv, Israel) (2025), Dvorit Shargal.