"An der Adria (Anna Koppitz)"

pigment print

studio-stamp, stamp on verso

The picture was one of the first nudes taken by the forty-year-old Rudolf Koppitz on his honeymoon with his wife Anna Koppitz in 1923 on the Italian Adriatic near Venice. "The two photographed each other naked, stretched out on rocks in the sea. The pose, which seems anything but natural or comfortable, is less a heartfelt declaration of love than painstakingly crafted art photography. Instead of depicting closeness and affection for each other, as one would expect on a honeymoon, the couple opted for an anonymized pose in which they are seen neither together nor intimate or erotically charged."¹
Anna Koppitz was born Anna Arbeitlang in Austria or Germany in 1895. Like Rudolf, she studied photography at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna, founded by the photochemist Josef Maria Eder, where she became an assistant in 1917. Rudolf had already been appointed assistant in 1913 before he was drafted into the war and served as a field and aerial photographer.
In 1920, Anna founded a studio in Vienna's fifth district, where Rudolf Koppitz was a partner from 1921. The two married in the summer of 1923 and the studio operated under his name alone. They worked together on artistic commissions, publications and projects. Anna was also Rudolf's assistant in his artistic work, his photo retoucher and worked with him on his first nude studies, some of his self-portraits, and often posed for him. She probably had a not insignificant influence on her husband's dedication to nude photography and even did not shy away from nude self-portraits.
(Christoph Fuchs, translated with DeepL)

Note

1
Magdalena Vukovic, ''Die Kunst des Körpers', in: Monika Faber (ed.), “Rudolf Koppitz. Photogenie. 1884-1936', Vienna 2013, p. 31