Eli Lotar (first name also Ely or Elie, last name also Lothar; born Eliazar or Eleazar Lotar Theodorescu; 30 January 1905 – 10 May 1969) was a French and Romanian photographer, cinematographer and film director. The eldest son of writer Tudor Arghezi, his mother was the schoolteacher and poet Constanța Zissu, who got pregnant with Arghezi when the latter was a monk in the Romanian Orthodox Church; Arghezi recognized him, and, upon being defrocked, married Zissu. Eliazar was cared for by his father and stepmother in Bucharest, becoming a resentful and rebellious child. He was reunited with Constanța after the World War I division of Romania, when she took him to Iași. He then attended Saint Sava National College, but often ran away to rejoin Zissu. Upon her death, he still rejected Arghezi's tutelage, and, before the end of 1924, fled to Paris.
Almost exclusively known abroad as "Eli Lotar", he tried to build his career as an actor, only landing a small part in Jacques Feyder's Carmen. He was taken in as a lover and apprentice by the art photographer Germaine Krull, and through her joined the Parisian avant-garde—also breaking into photojournalism at Vu magazine. By 1927, Lotar was a respected photographer, though still largely imitative of Krull and László Moholy-Nagy, doing unit stills for directors such as Henri Desfontaines and Nikolai Malikoff. His stylistic emancipation began when he joined dissident surrealists like Roger Vitrac, Antonin Artaud, and Georges Bataille. The latter featured his stark images of slaughterhouses in Documents magazine, using them to illustrate his own discourse on the sanitized cruelty at the heart of human experiences. Lotar debuted as a cameraman under Alberto Cavalcanti's direction, and afterwards specialized in camera work for documentary films—in acclaimed collaborations with Vitrac, Joris Ivens, Jacques Brunius, and Jean Painlevé.
A student of Marxism, passionate about working-class struggles, Lotar aligned himself with the French Communist Party. In 1932, he engaged in political work alongside documentarian Yves Allégret, with whom he tried to visit and film the destitute communities of Las Hurdes, in Republican Spain. They were stopped in Andalusia by hostile crowds; they went to Tenerife, making a documentary piece for Pathé. Lotar only reached Las Hurdes in 1933, alongside Luis Buñuel and Pierre Unik. The three-man team created Land Without Bread, regarded as both a significant milestone in the genre and a subject of political controversies. Lotar also took a sailing trip around the planet in 1934—alongside his creative partner Jacques-André Boiffard, he provided photographic records of destitution in French Morocco. He continued to work on various projects, mainstream as well as avant-garde and political, throughout the 1930s, becoming celebrated for his artistic vision; he remained in Vichy France during most of the 1940s, joining the resistance networks. He fled to Switzerland in 1944, and found employment with Skira publishers.
Though commissioned to him by his communist contacts, Lotar's 1946 documentary on life in Aubervilliers was widely held as a masterpiece in line with Italian neorealism. It is his only surviving project as a director, and his final experience of success. He continued to film in various locations, from Socialist Poland to colonial Cameroon, but was ignored by critics and filmmakers, and openly condemned by Buñuel as a traitor to communism. Arghezi was similarly shunned, but then rehabilitated, in communized Romania; Lotar made several trips back to Bucharest after 1956, reconnecting with his father and half-siblings. Increasingly erratic and improvident, struggling with alcoholism, he failed to relaunch his career in Romania; in his final work, he did portraits of Alberto Giacometti, who reciprocated with three busts (one of which is Giacometti's last sculpture). Eliazar outlived Arghezi by less than two years, thus failing to benefit from Arghezian royalties. His own contributions, amounting to some 9,000 photographs, were rediscovered and catalogued by Centre Pompidou in the 1990s. A selection was first shown in Bucharest in 2019.
Biography Origin and early childhood Eliazar Lotar Theodorescu was born in Paris' 18th arrondissementAmao et al., p. 12 on 30 January 1905.Ferenczes, p. 46. See also Livescu, p. 70 His mother, the Romanian schoolteacher Constanța "Sonia" Zissu, had traveled there specifically to give birth; she had been impregnated out-of-wedlock by Arghezi (Ion Nae Theodorescu), who, at the time, was a monk at Cernica Monastery. In a September 1905 letter to his friend, the writer and priest Gala Galaction, Arghezi spoke of the circumstances as follows: [Eliazar's] mother is no friend of mine [...] on one priceless evening, we loved each other under the tinsel of the moon, as to strong youth possessed by an ideal, to such infinity that the boy produced by such a solemnity could only have come out with a large forehead.Livescu, p. 70
Arghezi himself had an obscured, and for long mysterious, origin and ethnic heritage: his father, Nae Theodorescu, was a Romanian pastry-cook and merchant from Oltenia; his mother was a Hungarian (Székely) maid, Rozalia Ergézi, whose very existence was later concealed by Arghezi.Ferenczes, pp. 37–43, 46; Livescu, pp. 69–70. See also Cincă, p. 231 Authors such as Paul Cernat assume that Constanța Zissu was the sister of a Jewish community leader and writer, A. L. Zissu.Paul Cernat, Avangarda românească și complexul periferiei: primul val, pp. 56, 275. Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 2007. This interpretation is contradicted by archival research, which traced her lineage to an Orthodox and ethnic Romanian family, centered on Pitești.Țugui I, p. 12 This was once attested by Arghezi, who reported that Eliazar's maternal aunt was comedienne Romanitza Manolescu, noted in Paris for her wolf-whistling act.Tudor Arghezi, "Tablete. Romanitza", in Adevărul, 23 June 1946, p. 1
Eliazar's mother had first cultivated her literary ambitions within a circle of progressive intellectuals, formed around Adevărul daily, where she and Manolescu befriended painter Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck. Constanța was highly educated, having graduated from the University of Bucharest's Natural Sciences Department in January 1900. As noted by researcher Pavel Țugui, she most likely met Arghezi while serving as his substitute teacher at the Cliniciu–Popa Boys' Institute, where the monk had been allowed to study for his Romanian baccalaureate.Țugui I, p. 12 She did not want to risk her government job by having the details of her pregnancy leaked. Accounts differ as to what happened when Eliazar was a newborn. Author István Ferenczes believes that she abandoned Eliazar with a Parisian wet nurse,Ferenczes, p. 46 and he is in any case believed by Arghezi to have been "near Paris, sleeping on some foreign arm", in September 1905.Livescu, p. 70 Țugui argues that the baby was in Bucharest, with his Zissu grandparents, in late 1905—before Constanța began to consider giving him up for adoption.Țugui II, pp. 24–26 In early 1906, he was baptized Orthodox by Galaction.Țugui II, p. 25 The poet recovered his son, leaving him to be raised by Rozalia (known to him as "Maria"); throughout his childhood, which saw his father leaving him behind as he went on an extended trip to Switzerland (1906–1910), Eliazar remained especially close to her.Ferenczes, pp. 40, 45, 46–47. See also Livescu, p. 70; Țugui II, pp. 25–26 He once confessed to his friend, Eugen Jebeleanu, that, thanks to Rozalia, he could speak both Romanian and Hungarian as a child.Jebeleanu (1969), p. 1
Eliazar's parents were not on friendly terms by 1909, when Arghezi informed Rozalia "Maria" that he would only marry a homemaker—having been disgusted by intellectual women.Țugui II, p. 26 In 1910, however, Arghezi and Zissu had reconciled: she was allowed to take Eliazar to Switzerland, where he was reunited with Arghezi.Țugui III, p. 23 His parents eventually agreed to legalize their relationship, which was made possible once Arghezi had been defrocked in January 1912; they were married in October of that year, when she became "Constanța N. Theodorescu", and moved into the Zissu home at No. 1 Vestei Street.Țugui III, p. 23 Arghezi was almost immediately put off by her spending and her feminist outlook, moving out to an apartment at No. 62 Elisabeta Boulevard, and taking Eliazar with him.Țugui III, pp. 23–24 He later depicted the marriage as lasting only 24 hours, and being performed only as a formal service to Eliazar.Dragoș, p. 199 The couple were in fact only divorced in February 1914, with Arghezi granted full custody over the boy.Țugui III, p. 24. See also Ferenczes, p. 47 Returning to her maiden name, Constanța made published a selection of poems—including some that were ostensibly written for her former lover and husband.Țugui III, p. 24 By March 1916, she was a contributor to Eugenia de Reuss Ianculescu's feminist journal, Drepturile Femeii."Bibliografie", in Gazeta Transilvaniei, Issue 65/1916, p. 2
Runaway and emigrant Eliazar lived with Arghezi in Bucharest throughout the early stages of World War I, when Romania was still neutral; in that context, the poet took Paraschiva Burdea as his concubine, then as his legal wife. The country declared for The Entente in late 1916, and was promptly invaded by the Central Powers—in what became known as "The Romanian Debacle". Before the siege of Bucharest in November 1916, Arghezi allowed Constanța to take their son and flee with him to Iași, which was still safely controlled by a rump Romanian state.Țugui III, p. 24 Arghezi, who sided with the "Germanophile" camp, stayed behind in occupied Bucharest, and, as editor at Cronica and Gazeta Bucureștilor, propagandized against the legitimate government.Boia, pp. 24–26, 94, 97, 147, 149–151, 194, 222–223, 235–236. See also Cincă, passim; Mihalache, p. 637 Eliazar and his mother remained in Iași to 1918, when Romania sued for peace. They made their way back to Bucharest, when Constanța revealed to her former husband that she was gravely ill and materially destitute. He and Paraschiva agreed to sponsor her recovery; she moved back to her teaching post in Constanța City, while Paraschiva agreed to look after Eliazar, who was enlisted as a student at Saint Sava National College.Țugui III, p. 24