Thea Segall

THEA SEGALL( Romania, 1929- Caracás, Venezuela, 2009).
"The jungle of Venezuela".
Photograph.
Presents slight stains located in the upper margin.
Signed in the lower right corner and with reference on the back #16180.
Measurements: 97 x 63 cm.
Thea Segall Rubin was an outstanding photographer of Romanian origin who lived in Venezuela from 1958 until her death. Throughout her career, she received numerous awards, among them the National Photography Prize of Venezuela in 2003. She was editor of several publications, director of her own photographic studio, and produced a prolific body of work that included ethnographic recordings, rural culture, religious architecture, portraiture and institutional photography. In 1947 she began her self-taught training in photographic theory for the purpose of teaching, while pursuing formal studies at the Center for Photography at the School of Journalism, under the tutelage of Austrian photographer and teacher Otto Grossar, with whom she later collaborated as an assistant. That same year, her parents emigrated to Israel along with her younger sister, Natasa. Between 1948 and 1957 she worked as a photojournalist for the AgerPress International News Agency, founded by Otto Grossar, in Bucharest. In 1957, due to the repressive political context of the communist regime, she decided to leave Romania with her sister Mioara. They traveled without a passport, in precarious health conditions, first to Denmark and then to Paris. Between 1958 and 1960 he worked for the Creole Petroleum Corporation, publishing his photographs in the magazine El Farol. During this period he developed an authorial and research approach, both social and visual, focused on the fishing communities of Anzoátegui state.
In 1959 he founded the Thea Photographic Studio in Sabana Grande, Caracas, which he operated until 1994. In 1964 she obtained Venezuelan nationality with the support of General Briceño. She represented Venezuela as a delegate in the First Iberoamerican Congress of Scientific Journalism held in Caracas in 1974, and again in 1977, in the second congress of the same nature.