Rudolf Koppitz
{{Infobox person | name = Rudolf Koppitz | image = KOPPITZ R.jpg | caption = Rudolf Koppitz, self portrait, In the Bosom of Nature c. 1923. | birth_date = | birth_place = Skrbovice, Austrian Silesia | death_date = | death_place = Perchtoldsdorf, Austria }} Rudolf Koppitz (4 January 1884 in Skrbovice – 8 July 1936 in Perchtoldsdorf) was an Austrian photographer. He moved to Vienna and was a Photo-Secessionist whose work includes straight photography and modernist images. He was one of the leading representatives of art photography in Vienna between the world wars. Koppitz is best known for his works of the human figure including his iconic Bewegungsstudie, "Motion Study" and his use of the nude in natural settings. Biography Rudolf Koppitz was born into a rural Protestant family in Schreiberseifen, in the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia (in what is today Skrbovice, part of Široká Niva near Bruntál in the Czech Republic). Koppitz began training for his career as a photographer in 1897 under Robert Rotter from Bruntál. Koppitz later continued his work in small commercial studios as a contract photographer but in 1912, he left professional life to go back to school to continue his studies at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, "Institute for Teaching and Research in Graphic Arts" in Vienna, Austria. Rudolf had been appointed assistant there by 1913. His time at the Institute was interrupted by the First World War in which Koppitz his talents were put to use as a field and aerial reconnaissance photographer. The bulk of the body of work he produced during this time consisted of landscapes captured during his aerial reconnaissance work, his favorite of which was the study of water from the air and the geometric elements of flying machines that carried him into war. When Koppitz was not photographing for the Army he spent his time documenting the lives of soldiers and the communities of people he came into contact with. Photographs from this period are laden with dramatic sentiments due to Koppitz's use of light, the sun, clouds and mist to express the emotions of the people and the time. Returning to the institute, Koppitz met Anna Arbeitlang who studied photography there. She had become an assistant in 1917, like Koppitz, in the year she was admitted to the Vienna Photographic Society. She went on to become assistant lecturer, and Rudolf a professor in 1919, a role in which he remained for twenty years. In 1920, Arbeitlang founded a studio in the fifth district of Vienna where from 1921 Rudolf Koppitz was a partner. They married in the summer of 1923 and the studio thenceforth traded under his name. They worked together on their artistic commissions, publications and projects. She was also Rudolf's assistant on his artistic work, his photo retoucher and collaborated with him in making his first nude studies, some of his 'self-portraits,' and was often his model. Both Rudolf and Anna produced Kunstphotographie (as Pictorialism was called in Austria) in the aesthetics of