Atelier d'Ora-Benda: The Vienna Studio That Photographed Emperors, Klimt and Weimar's Wildest Dancer

Before it had emperors, movie stars and one of Weimar Berlin's most scandalous dancers in front of its lens, the Atelier d'Ora was just one woman's stubborn bet on herself. Dora Kallmus opened it in Vienna in 1907, at a time when formal photography training simply wasn't available to women, and built it into the most fashionable portrait studio in the city with the help of a technician named Arthur Benda who eventually got his own name on the door. For twenty years the studio, known through...