Yva, Women’s Legs (1920s) Yva (born Else Ernestine Neuländer, 1900-1942) was a Berlin photographer whose work brought avant-garde techniques and styles to the emerging genres of commercial advertising and fashion photography. Her photographs appeared in many popular magazines including Der Uhu, Die Dame, and Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. They were also included in landmark exhibitions such as “Film and Foto” (1929) in Stuttgart and “Das Lichtbild” (1930) in Munich. “Women’s Legs” [Frauenbeine], her photographic series of female legs in synthetic stockings, combined elements of still-life, fashion photography, portraiture, and commercial advertising. After the Nazi takeover, she was blacklisted by the Hitler regime on account of her Jewish background. Nonetheless, she remained in Berlin and continued to work throughout most of the 1930s. In June 1942, she and her husband, Alfred Simon, were deported to the Majdanek/Sobibor concentration cam; neither survived.