Lotte Jacobi Travel Photographs Now Online
Musicians in Stalinabad (Dushanbe), taken by Lotte Jacobi, ca. 1932-33
People in a perfume factory in Central Asia, taken by Lotte Jacobi, 1932
Firemen in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, taken by Lotte Jacobi, ca. 1932-33
The University of New Hampshire Library has completed the digitization of thousands of photographs taken by renowned photographer Lotte Jacobi during a 1932-1933 trip to the Soviet Union and Central Asia. These photographs, along with Jacobi’s travel journal, are now available through the library’s Digital Collections.
Four men in Michurinsk, Russia, taken by Lotte Jacobi, ca. 1932-33
Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) was born in Thorn, West Prussia (now Poland) and practiced photography in Berlin and New York before moving to New Hampshire in 1955. Widely regarded as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, she is known for her portraits of Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, W.E.B. DuBois, and other luminaries of the time. In 1985, she donated her papers and over 40,000 negatives to the University of New Hampshire, forming the Lotte Jacobi Collection.
From October of 1932 to January of 1933, Jacobi traveled through the Soviet Union. The trip represents her foray into photojournalism as she covered the effects of Soviet industrialization and modernization. She photographed workers, collective farmers, peasants, street traders, intellectuals, and political figures, starting in Moscow and Michurinsk and then in the socialist republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
There she produced powerful ‘factually’ inflected images of local people – capturing even minorities such as Jews in these Muslim-dominated lands – by departing from traditional romanticised views of the marginalised and by using modern experimental devices of destabilising angles and rigorous cropping.
-Rose-Carol Washton Long, art historian
Weimar Goes East: Lotte Jacobi’s Photographs and Soviet Imperialism in Central Asia
Jacobi took several thousand photographs during the trip, most of which were not printed until several years later at the University of New Hampshire. The complete digitization of these photographs, along with Jacobi's travel journal, represents a significant milestone in making Jacobi's groundbreaking work increasingly accessible to viewers and researchers around the globe.
"This is the best way to access this collection," says Special Collections Librarian Elizabeth Slomba. "It captures a time and a place that there just isn't that much of a photographic record of... It's a unique resource."
An exhibit of select photographic prints and other materials related to Jacobi’s life and travels was displayed in Dimond Library from February to July 2026. One of Jacobi's USSR photographs was chosen as the cover of the January 2026 issue of C&RL News, and recent exhibits of other Jacobi work have been held at the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro and Temple Israel in Portsmouth, N.H., in partnership with the New Hampshire Art Association.
Researchers interested in viewing physical items from the Jacobi Collection are invited to do so at the UNH Library’s Milne Special Collections and University Archives. You can schedule an appointment online, email us at archives@unh.edu, or call us at (603) 862-2714.
The UNH Library remains grateful to Lotte Jacobi and her family for entrusting us with this collection.
