YLLA

photographer of animals

1911 - 1955

Camilla Koffler, better known as Ylla, was born in Vienna in 1911 to a Yugoslav mother and a Hungarian father. She studied sculpture in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and, in 1931, moved to Paris to continue her studies. In order to support herself, she worked with well-known photographer Ergy Landau as a photo retoucher. During this time, she began to think of switching from sculpture to photography. She made her decision in 1932, after she showed Landau several photographs of animals that she had taken while on vacation in Normandy. Landau was very impressed with her work and arranged a show for her at the Galerie de La Pléiade. The show was a success and Ylla opened a studio in Paris specializing in animal portraits. In 1937, she published two small collections of dog and cat pictures and in 1938 followed with her first major book, Petits et Grands (published as Big and Little in England and the United States). That same year she was commissioned to do the photographs for British biologist Julian Huxley's new book, Animal Language.

The war and the invasion of France interrupted her growing career. In 1940, The Museum of Modern Art in New York submitted her name to the American State Department requesting an entry visa and she arrived in the United States in 1941. She opened a studio in New York and soon began attracting attention from pet owners, advertisers and editors. Her work appeared in many of the major illustrated magazines both in America and abroad and she produced ten books between 1944 and 1954. Several of her books were designed for children and two of them, The Sleepy Little Lion and Two Little Bears, became juvenile classics and were published in numerous languages throughout the world.

In 1952, Ylla spent three months in Kenya and Uganda photographing wild animals in their natural habitat for her book Animals in Africa. This was a new and exciting experience for her and one that marked a turning point in ther work. Up to this time, many of her photographs had been taken in her studio or at zoos, but after this trip, she preferred to work in as natural a setting as possible.

In late 1954, Ylla traveled to India as a guest of the Maharajah of Mysore. On March 30, 1955, while photographing a bullock cart race, she fell from the hood of a jeep and was fatally injured.

The photographs that Ylla took in India became the basis for, not one, but two books - The Little Elephant and Animals in India. Interest in her work remained strong and a total of nine books of her photographs appeared after her death.

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Ylla Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721

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