Henry Rox "He was a Strange Little Figure" Tommy Apple Banana-land 1934/1940

Henry Rox

(born Heinz Rosenberg, Berlin, 1899 – South Hadley, Massachusetts, 1967)
"Tommy Apple in Banana-land" Illustration opp. P.18
“He Was a Very Strange Little Fellow”
Vintage silver gelatin print, 1934 / printed c. 1940
Image: 5.75 x 5 inches
Estate stamp and handwritten notation verso

The scene exemplifies Rox’s extraordinary method of constructed photographic illustration. Rather than drawing his imagery, Rox fabricated miniature sculptural environments by hand—complete with terrain, vegetation, and figures—then photographed them with precise control of lighting and tonal gradation. In this image, the protagonist encounters a “very strange little fellow” within a surreal landscape populated by meticulously arranged broccoli trees, transformed through scale and lighting into convincing arboreal forms. The composition demonstrates Rox’s fusion of stagecraft, sculpture, and photography, creating narrative tension within a compressed theatrical space.

Henry Rox

(born Heinz Rosenberg, Berlin, 1899 – South Hadley, Massachusetts, 1967)

Henry Rox was born in Berlin in 1899 into a prosperous Jewish family whose department store operated in one of the city’s principal upscale commercial districts. This background afforded him the financial stability to pursue advanced academic and artistic training in Germany and France.

Education

University of Berlin
Art History
1919–1923

Charlottenburger Kunstgewerbeschule, Berlin
Wood Culture Specialization
1921–1925

Académie Julian, Paris
Sculpture
1925–1927

Académie Colarossi, Paris
Drawing and Sketching (Multiple Courses)
1925–1928

Berliner Fotoschule, Berlin
Advanced Photographic Training
1933

He maintained a studio at 14 Rue Bréa, Montparnasse, Paris, before returning to Berlin, where he established a modern studio above his parents’ shop and later on Nürnberger Strasse.

Formally trained as a sculptor, Rox exhibited widely during the late Weimar period and was an established figure within the European avant-garde.

Exhibition History (Selected Early Exhibitions)

Salon d’Automne
Paris

Juryfreie Kunstschau
Berlin, 1926

Freie Kunstschau
Berlin, 1929

Preussische Akademie der Künste
Berlin, 1930

Berliner Secession
1929–1932

Paul Cassirer Gallery
Berlin

Alfred Flechtheim Gallery
Berlin

Royal Academy of Arts
London

Royal Institute
Glasgow

A documented 1930 photograph of Rox’s Berlin studio confirms the scale and seriousness of his sculptural practice: a substantial modernist workspace with installed lighting, drafting tables, and works in progress. Rox was not an experimental amateur; he was an established European sculptor operating within the late Weimar avant-garde.

Working within Berlin’s experimental climate, Rox absorbed Dadaist strategies of constructed object juxtaposition and formal irony. His attendance at the Berliner Fotoschule in 1933 strengthened his technical command of photography, though his primary identity at that time remained sculptural.

With the rise of National Socialism, Rox and his wife Lotte fled Germany in 1934, abandoning his studio, sculptures, and professional infrastructure. His parents and other family members remained and were later murdered in concentration camps. When Rox left Berlin, the only professional instrument he carried beyond personal effects was his camera. That instrument became the foundation of his reinvention.

Rebuilding his career in London beginning in 1934, Rox formally developed what he termed “photo-sculpture” — sculptural constructions created specifically for photographic realization rather than pedestal display. In this new method, the photograph was conceived as the final artistic object. Financial necessity redirected Rox from independent sculpture toward the development of photo-sculptures for both creative and commercial application.

He introduced his constructed photographic language into British publishing culture, leading to commissions from Harrods; De Bilenkork (Holland); Vitrolite; Guinness; Churchill Tobacco; Shell Oil; Helene of London; and, later in the United States, CBS Radio; Container Corporation of America; Macy’s; Dole; Hawaiian Coffee; among others. Through these commissions, Rox translated sculptural intelligence into sophisticated advertising imagery.

During this London period, Rox collaborated with James Laver — author, critic, and art historian, and later Keeper of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1938–1959). Together they produced Tommy Apple and His Adventures in Banana-Land (Jonathan Cape, 1935) and Tommy Apple and Peggy Pear (Jonathan Cape, 1936). These works were not casual children’s novelties but structurally rigorous photographic constructions created in dialogue with one of Britain’s leading museum intellectuals. The collaboration firmly positioned Rox within British cultural and institutional circles.

Henry and Lotte Rox departed London for New York in May 1938. In 1939 he joined Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts as Lecturer in Sculpture, commuting from New York during his first year before relocating permanently in 1940. This transitional period coincided with intense experimentation across media.

In 1940 Rox created an animated short incorporated into MGM’s Strike Up the Band, demonstrating continued engagement with narrative construction and material animation. He also co-authored his third and final children’s book, Banana Circus, with Margaret Fisher, a fellow German émigré who had likewise relocated to London in 1934.

Rox’s photo-sculptures gained broader visibility through American publishing networks under Henry Luce and Condé Nast, appearing in major magazines including Life, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar, Collier’s, and McCall’s. Although his financial status never returned to its Berlin-era level, his American period allowed him to continue serious sculptural production alongside his photographic work.

His first Guggenheim Fellowship application in 1941, proposing further development of animation and film, was unsuccessful. A second application in 1949, again focused on sculpture, was also rejected. In 1954 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for sculpture and later became Mary Lyon Professor of Art at Mount Holyoke College.

Following Rox’s death in July 1967 and Lotte Rox’s death in April 1971, a substantial portion — approximately 300–500 lifetime prints — was salvaged and preserved. No known negatives are extant. These prints therefore constitute the primary surviving material record of his photo-sculptural practice.

Rox’s work has undergone renewed European institutional reassessment in recent years due in significant part to the research of Wolfgang Vollmer of Cologne, Germany. This reassessment includes a 2021 exhibition at Fotohof, Salzburg; the inclusion of material from the Banana Circus series at the Bonartes Photo Institute in Vienna (December 2025 – February 2026); and participation in Berlin’s European Month of Photography

“He Was a Very Strange Little Fellow” stands as a foundational image from Rox’s London period — the moment when sculptural intelligence, Dada-inflected material transformation, and photographic staging converged into a fully articulated modernist method.