The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 20, 2025
Reichenau
1929
(American, 1899–1998)
Image: 8.8 x 14.3 cm (3 7/16 x 5 5/8 in.); Mounted: 24.9 x 34.9 cm (9 13/16 x 13 3/4 in.); Paper: 8.8 x 14.3 cm (3 7/16 x 5 5/8 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)
Gift of George Stephanopoulos 2011.230
© Estate of Ilse Bing
Location: Not on view
Description
Reichenau and Überlingen are towns on the German side of Lake Constance. Ilse Bing was writing a doctoral dissertation on an 18th-century architect and began to take photography seriously in order to provide illustrations for it. She shot these pictures and the one on the left during a fateful departmental outing. On that trip, Bing saw for the first time a painting by Vincent van Gogh and instantly decided to abandon art history and become an artist—but not a painter. “I didn’t choose photography; it chose me,” she said. “It was the trend of the time. . . . And the camera, that was, in a way, the beginning of the mechanical device penetrating into the field of art.”- George Stephanopoulos
- Ilse Bing: Queen of the Leica. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 6-October 11, 2020).
- {{cite web|title=Reichenau|url=false|author=Ilse Bing|year=1929|access-date=20 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2011.230