The Swiss woman who fled the Nazis and changed Brazilian photojournalism

The heart of an expanding megalopolis: Praça da Sé, São Paulo, 1940. Instituto Moreira Salles

A Swiss émigré who escaped Europe in the late 1930s, Hildegard Rosenthal became one of the pioneers of photojournalism in Latin America. Eight decades on, her work reveals a São Paulo in transformation – and a legacy that continues to inspire.

A smiling boy, wearing a cap and simple clothes, holds up a newspaper with a headline that captured the fear and tension of a Europe at war. The photograph shows a young news vendor presenting a copy with the headline in Portuguese: “Twenty German divisions on the Swiss border.” 

The contrast between the boy’s innocence and the gravity of the news illustrates the climate of uncertainty of the early days of the Second World War, when Swiss neutrality was being tested by Nazi military movements and impacting the whole world. 

The photograph was taken in 1939 by Hildegard Rosenthal, who was Swiss by birth, in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest metropolis. She had emigrated to Brazil to escape Nazi persecution two years earlier.  

A newspaper boy announcing the “imminent invasion of Switzerland by German troops” at the beginning of the Second World War, São Paulo, 1939. Instituto Moreira Salles

Her photography captured Brazil’s social transformation with a modern, European-influenced style, uniting art and journalism. As a trailblazing woman photojournalist, she brought unique and intimate perspectives to the Brazilian scene. Today, she is celebrated as one of the earliest and most influential figures in Latin American photojournalism.

With her small-format camera, Rosenthal quickly captured São Paulo in transformation. Her images of workers, cafés, construction sites and women in motion portrayed a country eager for modernity yet still burdened by deep-rooted traumas, such as great social inequality. Behind the lens, she brought a perspective shaped by European visual culture, introducing a new photographic language to Brazil with the help of emerging technology. 

After the war that brought her to South America, Rosenthal’s body of work offers a striking counterpoint to exile-and-trauma narratives. It tells a story of creation and reinvention. Her life is emblematic of immigration through silent resistance and artistic contribution, helping shape Swiss public memory far beyond its borders in the 80 years since the end of the world conflict. 

Brazil: a safe place

Rosenthal was born in Zurich in 1913. She moved to Germany as a child, where she developed an interest in photography. She worked as an au pair in France and, in the 1930s, began taking photographs while working as a nanny and studying pedagogy. 

The rise of Nazism in Europe, however, was cause for concern. Walther Rosenthal, Hildegard’s fiancé and of Jewish origin, left Europe for Brazil in 1936 to escape growing persecution. 

Hildegard Rosenthal working on her photo enlarger, next to a coffee tray, 1942. Instituto Moreira Salles

Brazil became the only option for Hildegard, who could not return to Switzerland with her fiancé, as the country did not accept Jewish refugees. “During the Second World War, Switzerland was, for most of the time, surrounded by Axis powers. Combined with the intensity of the conflict, this made emigration unfeasible. Switzerland also closed its borders to Jewish refugees”, says Michael Schmitz, a researcher at the University of Lausanne’s Centre for International History and Political Globalisation Studies. 

Hildegard crossed the ocean to join him, with war looming. Even so, Schmitz notes that, despite the option of going to Latin America, immigration to Brazil was not particularly appealing to Europeans fleeing the conflict, given state policies that imposed obstacles. 

“The United States and Brazil had immigration quotas. The Vargas regime in Brazil was interested in unskilled agricultural workers rather than industrial workers or merchants. In Brazil’s case, political turbulence probably reduced its appeal even further,” he says. 

Shoeshine boy, undated. Instituto Moreira Salles

Challenges did not end upon arrival. Adapting to Brazilian society and its male-dominated labour market was no less demanding during a period in which the country was transitioning from an agrarian economy to industrialisation, with thousands of men and women leaving the countryside and moving to the cities.

“Women entering the photography profession in the first half of the 20th century faced a double challenge: breaking into a field that was still developing while also confronting the barriers imposed by patriarchy,” says Lúcia Lima, from the University of São Paulo (USP), who has studied Rosenthal’s life.

Although she never spoke publicly about the difficulties she faced upon arriving in Brazil, Rosenthal’s work left traces of these challenges. In a testimony given to the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS, São Paulo) in 1981, Rosenthal made clear the essence of her photography: “Photography without people does not interest me.” The phrase reveals more than an aesthetic preference.  

It reflects an intimate connection with the everyday life of an urban Brazil in transformation, a country she chose to portray not through its monuments but through the anonymous life pulsing in its streets. This choice demanded a process of adaptation, given working conditions far from the European standard and the challenge of proposing a new photographic language in an environment still unaccustomed to experimentation.

Some things remain the same, such as the the Pacaembu Stadium, captured during its inauguration in 1940. The stadium was heavily inspired by the Art Deco architecture of the Berlin Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 1936 Olympics. Instituto Moreira Salles

Leica and style

Rosenthal arrived in Brazil with training in photography acquired in Germany and France. Initially self-taught, she later studied laboratory techniques in France and took lessons from German photographer Paul Wolff whilst in Germany. Wolff taught his students to train their eyes and pay close attention to light. For him, gaze was essential to photographic success, and the Leica camera, with its mobility, was the ideal tool to explore it with.

Modernist vein: Newspaper boy, photomontage, 1940. Instituto Moreira Salles

“An enthusiast of the Leica, Wolff was highly influential in the German scene of the 1930s and helped train an entire generation of photographers. He explored the possibilities of small-format cameras to develop a modern visual language,” says Helouise Costa, a professor at USP. 

These cameras were far lighter than earlier models that required tripods, Costa notes, allowing greater agility in street photography. They made it easier to produce sharp, spontaneous images and to use unusual angles and strong contrasts of light. “Such techniques were part of the repertoire of the so-called New Photography, which emerged from the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century,” she says. 

With a letter of recommendation to Lasar Segall, an influential Lithuanian painter based in Brazil, Rosenthal quickly found work. She began in a photography studio before becoming a photojournalist for leading outlets such as Folha de S.Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo and magazines including A Cigarra, Sombra and Rio. 

Reading society

Rosenthal’s lens captured the transformation and modernisation of a São Paulo that, in the 1930s and 1940s, looked to Europe for inspiration but still bore the weight of machismo and poverty.

This influence could be seen in urban renewal projects and in the city centre’s architecture, shaped by the aspirations of the local elite. Yet her photographs reveal something deeper: a constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction that would come to define the city. 

“Hildegard dedicated herself extensively to photographing the urban environment, whether on press assignments or in her explorations of modern photography. Her images record boulevards lined with buildings as well as the movement of crowds, creating perspectives that resonate with other modern photographers such as André Kertész and Germaine Krull in Paris, or Berenice Abbott in New York,” says Lima. 

The indiscreet charm of São Paulo’s bourgeoisie: taxi driver, 1939. Instituto Moreira Salles

Her work engages with the aesthetics of modern metropolises while capturing the particularities of a city marked by class and gender inequality. Being a woman gave her access to spaces and experiences that her male colleagues rarely documented, offering unique perspectives on female presence in the urban landscape. 

“There is a direct relationship with people, with documenting urban life and individuals, but the way she builds this approach from different points of view clearly shows an aesthetic influence from the new era of photography. It is a hallmark of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe that is present in her work,” says Sergio Burgi, curator and photography coordinator at the Instituto Moreira Salles. 

A lasting legacy

The European perspective Rosenthal brought to Latin America left a pioneering legacy. She died in 1990, but her influence remains in Brazilian photojournalism, especially in the development of a distinct visual language that inspired generations. 

“Her work stands out in that period precisely for its aesthetic elaboration, which, although rooted in contemporary debates, goes far beyond a formal exercise in language. It is something deeper, in dialogue with the time in which it was produced,” says Burgi. 

Girls eating ice cream in Liberdade, the Japanese neighbourhood, 1940. São Paulo is the city with the largest Japanese and Japanese-descendant population outside Japan. Instituto Moreira Salles

“This construction of a vision of the city reveals something profound about São Paulo. It is often said that Brazil is not for amateurs – and São Paulo even less so. It is a complex place in constant transformation. Hildegard was part of the process of approaching and interpreting a city in the midst of intense metamorphosis,” he adds. 

For Lima, Rosenthal’s photographs combine the modern language of photography with forms of representation and themes overlooked by her male contemporaries.  

“The notions of modernity are not universal, as is often assumed. Hildegard’s photographs reveal the diversity of experiences, spaces and relationships that shaped modern society in the first half of the 20th century. Her legacy is part of the significant contribution of immigrants to photographic production and Latin American visual culture. Her work provides insights into women’s experiences in modernity and adds new layers to our understanding of modern photography,” she says. 

Edited by Virginie Mangin and Eduardo Simantob/gw