Florence Meyer

Florence Meyer Homolka (January 22, 1911 – November 27, 1962) was an American portrait photographer, socialite, and Broadway performer. Born in New York City, she was the eldest child of Eugene Meyer (1875–1959), who would become publisher of the Washington Post, and Agnes Elizabeth Ernst Meyer (1887–1970). She and her four siblings were baptized as Lutherans and attended an Episcopal church. Meyer received her education at the Madeira School and Bryn Mawr College before graduating from Radcliffe College.

Meyer built a career as a portrait photographer, turning her lens on a wide range of prominent figures including Van Cliburn, James Agee, Thomas Mann, Constantin Brâncuși, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Vladimir Horowitz, Lion Feuchtwanger, Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, and fellow photographers Edward Steichen, Walker Evans, and Brassaï. She was a close friend and protégée of Man Ray, and in 1946 she photographed the double wedding portraits of Man Ray and Juliet Browner alongside those of Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Her work was exhibited at the Palos Verdes Art Gallery in 1950 and at Los Angeles City Hall in 1952. A collection of her writing on the subject, Focus on Art, was published posthumously in 1962 with a foreword by Aldous Huxley.

In 1937, Meyer appeared on Broadway in Kurt Weill's The Eternal Road, performing the roles of the Juggler and the Priestess of the Golden Calf as a member of the original cast.

In 1939, Meyer married Oscar Homolka (1898–1978), a widowed Austrian character actor. The couple had two sons, Vincent and Laurence. They divorced in 1946, though the financial terms of the divorce remained in dispute as late as 1952. Meyer died of a respiratory attack in Santa Monica in 1962 at the age of 51.