Eva Besnyö

Eva Marianna Besnyö was an Hungarian-Dutch photographer. Eva grew up with two sisters in a liberal Jewish family. At the age of 18 she followed an education in advertising and portrait photography given by Josef Pecsi. He stimulated her to go to Berlin where she met the Dutch film maker John Fernhout. Fernhout, the son of the painter Charley Toorop, returned to Holland in 1930. Because of the rise of the Nazis Eva Besnyö left Germany in 1932 and followed Fernhout to Holland where they married in 1933. Until the Second World War the themes of her photographs contained a lot of social subjects, but she was also interested in photographing architecture. During the German occupation she had to hide and became active in the resistence.
In 1945 she divorced Fernhout and a year later married graphic designer Wim Brusse with whom she had a son and daughter. After the children were older she began to photograph again and in the beginning of the 70's she became very involved in photographing the actions of the feminist group 'Dolle Mina'.
As she got older she had problems with her eyes and had to stop photographing. The last years of her life she lived in the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren and passed away in 2003 at 93 years of age.