Born and educated in Germany, Elisabeth started working with photographers when GEO magazine launched in the US. Subsequently she moved to Vanity Fair and, after seven years as Director of Photography, she returned to Germany to work for Stern, one of Germany’s largest newsweeklies.
She then moved back to New York to become Visuals Editor of The New Yorker, shortly after photography was introduced to the magazine. She helped shape the look of the publication by establishing a group of staff photographers, commissioning both masters and emerging talent. She built the magazine’s reputation for its use of photography, for which it received numerous awards, including two National Magazine Awards.
In 2011, she left The New Yorker to work as an independent curator, teacher, and writer. She was a juror for the World Press Photography Awards and the Sony World Photography Awards, in addition to numerous national and international photography juries. Photography Magazine publishes her columns and she is one of the original founders of The Photography Master Retreat, which takes place every year in the south of France.
Her independent curating includes Subjective/Objective and Under the Bridge for the New York PhotoFestival and New Yorker Fiction/Real Photography at Steven Kasher Gallery, Beyond Words, at the Howard Greenberg Gallery and Ullens Center in Beijing, REFUGEE at the Annenberg Center for Photography. Most recently she was a judge in the eight-episodes Sky Arts ‘Master of Photography’, which aired in 2018 and again in 2019. She is a teacher, and a writer and advises established and emerging photographers.