ringl+pit

Ringl + pit was the studio partnership of Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern, who met as private students of the Bauhaus professor Walter Peterhans. Stern took over Peterhans's Berlin studio in 1929, and the following year she and Auerbach formed the studio foto ringl + pit, taking its name from their respective childhood nicknames.

"I frivoled and she was serious," Auerbach later recalled of the balance between their personalities. Ringl + pit specialized in advertising photography, and their work redefined the image of women in advertising, helping to shape the visual identity of the "new woman" who emerged in the 1910s and 1920s as women gained the right to vote and entered the workforce in growing numbers.

Their partnership ended when both emigrated in 1933, as the political situation in Germany made continuing their work there impossible. They attempted briefly to reunite the studio in London in 1935, but Auerbach was denied a work permit, and the collaboration was not revived.