Through a Bauhaus Lens: Edith Tudor-Hart and Isokon
An exhibition of newly discovered photographs by the Bauhaus-trained photographer, and Soviet agent. Opening Saturday 2nd March 2024
To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the opening of the Isokon Flats, the Isokon Gallery in Hampstead is hosting Through a Bauhaus Lens: Edith Tudor-Hart and Isokon, an exhibition of previously unseen 1934 photographs by the Viennese Bauhaus-trained photographer Edith Tudor-Hart. The recently discovered prints document the historic construction and opening of the Isokon, Britain's first reinforced concrete apartment block. Designed by Canadian architect Wells Coates, and pioneering a new way of living, in tiny "mimimum” 25m2 apartments, during the 1930s and 1940s, the building was home to an incredible community of mostly left-wing artists, writers, four Bauhaus masters (Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy Nagy), Agatha Christie and, it later emerged, a community of Soviet spies.
In 1934, Jack Pritchard, the Flats' owner, commissioned Edith Tudor-Hart, newly married and recently arrived from Vienna (where she had joined the Communist party), to document this pioneering building. He also made introductions which helped launch her photographic career in Britain. But Tudor-Hart had another, secret life. Whilst working as a photographer for publications including The Listener, Picture Post, and Geographical Magazine, she was also a Soviet agent. In July 1934, at the same time as she was photographing the opening of the Isokon Flats, she helped to recruit Kim Philby for Soviet intelligence. Under MI5 surveillance for decades, the extent of Tudor-Hart's involvement with the Cambridge Five spies has never been fully established, although in his confession of 1964, Anthony Blunt dubbed her "the grandmother of us all".
Tudor-Hart was thought to have destroyed much of her work, following the exposure of the Cambridge Five. However, a cache of her negatives from the 1930s, has recently been discovered at FOTOHOF in Salzburg, where her archive is now held. These include the full series of Isokon photographs. Developing and printing has revealed the images to be of high quality and full of detailed observations. With her Bauhaus-trained eye, Tudor-Hart’s graphically powerful, almost abstract images of the Flats, imbued the building with a monumental quality. Nikolaus Pevsner, the leading architectural critic of the time, would later call Wells Coates’ landmark building, “a manifesto” and “a giant’s work. But with her deep social conscience, Tudor-Hart's images also feature the construction workers in flat caps and tweed jackets pouring concrete high above the Hampstead rooftops, and huddled in groups during a tea-break on the building site. This "lost" series of Tudor-Hart's photographs will undoubtedly contribute to scholarship about the photographer as well as knowledge about early Modernist building techniques.
Edith Tudor-Hart’s artistic reputation has soared in recent years, as has interest in her fascinating life story and speculation about her role as a NKVD agent. She has been the subject of a novel, Edith and Kim, an animated feature film, Tracking Edith, and retrospectives of her photographic work have been shown at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh and Tate Britain in London. Yet despite the fascination and continued academic interest, Tudor-Hart remains an enigma.
Through a Bauhaus Lens: Edith Tudor Hart and Isokon, will run at the Isokon Gallery from 2nd March to 27th October 2024.
All images Edith Tudor-Hart, copyright Families Suschitzky/Donat, FOTOHOF archiv, Salzburg.