Lucia Moholy left Germany in August 1933 after her partner Theodor Neubauer was arrested in her apartment. She left her entire oeuvre to that date – 500 to 600 glass negatives – in the care of her ex-husband László Moholy-Nagy. She fled via Prague, Vienna and Paris to London. After her divorce, Lucia Moholy regained her Czech citizenship. She was thus no longer a national of a belligerent country and could make an application for naturalization in the United Kingdom. She produced many of her insightful portraits of English nobleman, academics, authors, publishers and politicians in her photo studio in London's Bloomsbury district.

The English language was no great hurdle for her, since she had already received teaching qualifications for German and English in 1912. In 1938 she became a member of the Royal Photographic Society. When, in September 1940, the Royal Photographic Society’s building in Mecklenburgh Square was hit during a bombing raid, she applied to emigrate to the United States. Despite the help of her brother, the dramaturge and writer Franz Schulz, her visa application was rejected by the US immigration authorities. Beside Moholy’s photographic activities, she wrote articles and delivered lectures. After the start of the war, she recorded on microfilm important documents, manuscripts and graphical works of the university library at the University of Cambridge. At the end of the war Lucia Moholy was granted British citizenship.

Selected works:
Bauhausgebäude Dessau (1926)
Walter Gropius (1927)
Emma Countess of Oxford and Asquith (1935)
Cambridge (um 1936)
Sir Ernest Barker (um 1936)
Sir Alfred Hopkinson (1937)
A Hundred Years of Photography (1939)

Further reading:
Schuldenfrei, Robin: Bilder im Exil: Lucia Moholys Bauhaus-Negative und die Konstruktion des Bauhaus-Erbes. In: Hansen-Schaberg, Inge / Thöner, Wofgang / Feustel, Adriane (Hg.): Entfernt. Frauen des Bauhauses während der NS-Zeit – Verfolgung und Exil, München: edition text + kritik im Richard Boorberg Verlag GmbH & Co KG 2012, S. 252 – 274
Sachsse, Rolf: Lucia Moholy. Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona 1985