Germaine Krull’s playful, softly intimate photographs resist categorisation. In these amorphous compositions, the skin and shape of many limbs is reminiscent of luminous marble sculptures — a tribute to Krull’s personal admiration of the female form.

Krull was an influential member of the international avant-garde based in Paris in the early twentieth century. Her intellectual approach to photography — and thoughtful experimentation with the medium’s technical dimensions — encouraged a new way of seeing the world. After an itinerant childhood, Krull studied photography from 1916–18 in Munich, Germany, at a time where women were rarely seen in academic or institutional contexts.

Krull was a pioneer of the self-published book, however Études de nu was championed and published by the renowned Librarie des Arts Décoratifs, and features texts by Krull and the poet, novelist and playwright Jean Cocteau. Krull expresses the importance of photography as a means to record an unfolding era of transformation, in particular the dream of social liberation for women.