Betti Mautner

Betti Mautner came from Vienna to London as a Jewish refugee in the 1930s.
She had already gained acclaim in the 1920s and 1930s as a Pictorialist photographer exhibiting at many of the major international exhibitions and being included in major Pictorialist annuals, alongside figures such as Paul Stand and Edward Weston. 

In England she became an associate of the Royal Photographic Society and wrote a popular manual on photography, All About Making Contact Prints From Your Negatives, for Kraszna-Krausz's celebrated Focal Press. However, she appears to have become less active as a photographer and instead devoted herself to teaching photography. Almost all her known works predate her move to England.

The major collections of her work are in the Albertina in Vienna and the V&A in London which acquired a number of her works in 1979. On her death in 1988 several works were given to James Hyman - Betti was the first cousin of his grandmother, Helen Mautner - but tragically the majority of her photographs appear to have been discarded.