O tell me and I loved you better nor you knew
Born to German parents in what is now part of Poland, Germaine Krull (1897-1985) had an unconventional childhood that seemed to prime her for an independent life.
Her father, an engineer who moved the family frequently from city to city, largely educated her himself.
He also let her dress as a boy for some years, as she was inclined to do, perhaps foreshadowing her open-mindedness toward women’s social and sexual roles.
Krull’s father’s progressive views on social justice also seem to have predisposed her to involvement with radical politics.
Professional training in photography in Munich gave Krull a means to make her way through the world, as both observer and activist.
Krull learned a soft-focus, “pictorialist” style in school but soon undermined the false lyricism associated with it in a series of nudes from the early ’20s that are almost like satires of lesbian pornography.
