Much like the painters and sculptors before them, photographers sought out models and muses for their work. Some of these became world famous, sometimes becoming more famous then those that showed them to the world. To name a few; Kiki de Montparnasse in France, Pamela Green in England, Swedish born Lisa Fonssagrives in France and the US, Charis Wilson who posed for so many of Edward Weston's photographs. Then there was Assia Granatouroff. 

(excerpt from jeudepaume.org below)
In the headily optimistic interwar years, Paris was a city of modernity that drew avant-garde artists such as Jacques-André Boiffard, Laure Albin Guillot, Maurice Tabard, and Emmanuel Sougez from all over France and even further afield—Marianne Breslauer, Annelise Kretschmer, Germaine Krull, Erwin Blumenfeld, Gisèle Freund, and Wols from Germany, Brassaï, André Kertész, François Kollar, Ergy Landau, and André Steiner from Hungary, George Hoyningen-Huene and Albert Rudomine from Russia, Raoul Ubac from Belgium, and Man Ray and Berenice Abbott from the United States.

This extraordinary cultural melting-pot made Paris the undisputed capital of photography from the 1920s to the 1940s, as avant-garde artists exchanged ideas and experiments to create a ‘new vision’ of photography.

‘The New Vision was a positivist movement that put its faith in mankind, claimed to produce ‘real images’, and took pains to produce an exact, almost sculptural rendering of the face. The frame became a vital component of the showcasing and originality of the portrait. The most striking feature remained the fetishization of stark sharpness, with no detail allowed to escape the eye of the lens.’

Assia, a young model discovered by Roger Schall, became the muse of many New Vision photographers in the 1930s. Assia Granatouroff, born in the Ukraine in 1911, became a professional photographer’s model. She embodied the spirit of nude photography of the day. Thanks to her, photographers were able to fully express their unique vision and their modernity. (end of excerpt)

In this context, Assia is an idéal model: She radiates a beauty and a perfectly natural charm, a little boyish , with golden hair, curly, square shoulders, full bust, strong legs and torso which shows without affectation "a powerful body"

She quickly became one of the most popular and most expensive models in Paris. She worked regularly with many of the (now famous) photographers, only allowing each one or 2 sessions per week.

The sculptor Charles Despiau hired the Ukrainian for several representations: "The shoulders are Egyptian . The body is Greek." Assia posed for him once or twice a week from 1934 to 1938.

Biography (from french wikipedia badly translated)
Assia was of Russian Jewish heritage, Her family fled Russia to France when she was 11

She was sixteen when she left home . She stayed in rue de Rennes, near Montparnasse, which was then the center of the artistic life of Paris . She practiced design.  She created floral designs, which she sold to the textile mills of the North. In 1930, she became a model for photographers like Roger Schall , who discovered her. Others like Dora Maar, Germaine Krull, Ergy Landau, Emmanuel Sougez. She also posed for many sculptors ( Despiau, Aristide Maillol, Paul Belmondo, Chana Orloff ) and painters ( André Derain, Moïse Kisling, Kees van Dongen, Marcel Gromaire, Suzanne Valadon, Henry Waroquier, Edmond Ceria ). 

Her modeling money was earned so she could finance (at the Vieux-Colombier) a theatrical career that continued under the direction of Charles Dullin. In 1935 , she played several roles in films and participated in the movie "Black Eyes" -  Victor Tourjansky.

In 1940, Assia Granatouroff took refuge in the free zone. Later arrested by the Gestapo because she was Jewish, she managed to get free and join the ranks of the Resistance. She Frenchified her name and was now called Granatour. Her husband was also arrested around 1941, and returned from captivity in 1944. The couple divorced in 1949.

From 1950, she exhibited works of spiritual esoterica, and her artistic production was moving towards a clean symbolism. Going back to her roots she created compositions of flowers, and tapestries inspired by tarot cards from 1972-78.

She died of Bone cancer on May 17, 1982.

One of the most famous and influential photographers of his day. Before Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson, Munkácsi was the first to develop the "street photography" genre

About the artist from Wikipedia: 

Martin Munkácsi (born Mermelstein Márton; Kolozsvár, Hungary, May 18, 1896; died July 13, 1963, New York, NY) was a Hungarian photographer who worked in Germany (1928–34) and the United States.

Munkácsi was a newspaper writer and photographer in Hungary, specializing in sports. At the time, sports action photography could only be done in bright light outdoors. Munkácsi's innovation was to make sports photographs as meticulously composed action photographs, which required both artistic and technical skill.

Munkácsi's legendary big break was to happen upon a fatal brawl, which he photographed. Those photos affected the outcome of the trial of the accused killer, and gave Munkácsi considerable notoriety. That notoriety helped him get a job in Berlin in 1928, for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, where his first published photo was a race car splashing its way through a puddle. He also worked for the fashion magazine Die Dame.

More than just sports and fashion, he photographed Berliners, rich and poor, in all their activities. He traveled to Turkey, Sicily, Egypt, London, New York, and famously Liberia, for photo spreads in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung.

The speed of the modern age and the excitement of new photographic viewpoints enthralled him, especially flying. There are aerial photographs; there are air-to-air photographs of a flying school for women; there are photographs from a Zeppelin, including the ones on his trip to Brazil, where he crosses over a boat whose passengers wave to the airship above.

On March 21, 1933, he photographed the fateful "Day of Potsdam", where the aged President Paul von Hindenburg handed Germany over to Adolf Hitler. On assignment for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, he photographed Hitler's inner circle, ironically because he was a Jew and a foreigner.

In 1934, the Nazis nationalized the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, fired its Jewish editor-in-chief, Kurt Korff, and replaced its innovative photography with pictures of German troops.

Munkácsi left for New York, where he signed on, for a substantial $100,000, with Harper's Bazaar, a top fashion magazine. Innovatively, he often left the studio to shoot outdoors, on the beach, on farms and fields, at an airport. He produced one of the first articles illustrated with nude photographs in a popular magazine.

His portraits include Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Howard, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Jane Russell, Louis Armstrong, and the definitive dance photograph of Fred Astaire.

Munkácsi died in poverty and controversy. Several universities and museums declined to accept his archives, and they were scattered around the world.

Berlin's Ullstein Archives and Hamburg's F. C. Gundlach collection are home to two of the largest collections of Munkácsi's work.

Munkácsi's influence

In 1932, the young Henri Cartier-Bresson, at the time an undirected photographer who catalogued his travels and his friends, saw the Munkácsi photograph Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika, taken on a beach in Liberia. Cartier-Bresson later said, "For me this photograph was the spark that ignited my enthusiasm. I suddenly realized that, by capturing the moment, photography was able to achieve eternity. It is the only photograph to have influenced me. This picture has such intensity, such joie de vivre, such a sense of wonder that it continues to fascinate me to this day." He paraphrased this many times during his life, including the quotation, "I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over."

Richard Avedon said of Munkácsi, "He brought a taste for happiness and honesty and a love of women to what was, before him, a joyless, loveless, lying art. Today the world of what is called fashion is peopled with Munkácsi's babies, his heirs.... The art of Munkácsi lay in what he wanted life to be, and he wanted it to be splendid. And it was."

In 2007, the International Center of Photography mounted an exhibit of Munkácsi's photography titled, Martin Munkácsi: Think While You Shoot! in conjunction with the show Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Scrapbook: Photographs, 1932-46. In 2009, the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City staged a joint exhibit of photographs by Edward Steichen and Munkácsi.

As someone who has grown up around photography, I always felt I knew quite a bit about its practitioners. I had books by Steichen, Adams, Weston, Cartier-Bresson. I used to cut Richard Avedon's lawn as a teenager. I used to work with Fritz Henle's daughter. I knew all there was.

Then one day I ran across a 1930s compilation of gravures. I discovered a whole new world. The world of Brassai, Drtikol, Ruzicka, Kertesz, Blumenfeld and so many more. Many of them east Europeans. I think everyone in Hungary must have been born with a camera in their hand and an amazing sense of composition. 

My love of photography was rekindled. I devoured all I could. I collected all the work I could find.

In this blog, I hope to share what I have found with those of you that are unfamiliar with this world, To share with others their magnificent work, and discover the influence these great photographers of the early 20th century have on todays artists with a camera.

The accompanying photo is by Robert Frank one of the century's most influential photographers, who photographed american life but was actually Swiss. His book "The Americans" is one of the most influential (and expensive) photography books published. More on him in a future post.