UC Riverside

Between 1949 and 1958, the photographer Dora Kallmus (Austrian, 1882–1963) known under the alias Madame d’Ora, undertook a photography project in the slaughterhouses of Paris. Of the series, nearly two hundred photographs were printed and have until recently been considered only in a strict context of post-WWII trauma or as gestures of empathy. This study examines the relationship of d’Ora’s Slaughterhouse Series to postwar intellectual critique of theatrical spectacle in the aftermath of Nazi occupation. These photographs will be interpreted through a lens of existentialist philosophy, first by addressing Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s “ethics of authenticity,” which requires total individual freedom (Sartre’s precondition for art) and responsibility of action. Secondly, the images will be analyzed in terms of the Nazi infiltration of the French ballet. Finally, the series will be discussed as a rhetorical critique of Surrealist motives in a feminist context. Understood in dialogue with Existentialism, d’Ora’s slaughterhouse photographs create a stage of engagement for the viewer to contemplate the new individual and collective existence in the postwar climate while operating to disrupt psychological complacency. By doing this, d’Ora became a critical figure in reorienting the purpose of art and photography in postwar Paris.