Lena Herzog: Who Is Werner Herzog’s Wife?

Lena Herzog is a Russian-American visual artist and photographer. She is also famous as the wife of German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director Werner Herzog. Lena’s husband Werner Herzog is regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. He has been able to produce, write, and direct over sixty feature films and documentaries. He has also published more than a dozen books of prose and directed many operas.

Lena Herzog: Bio Summary

How Old Is Lena Herzog?

Lena Herzog was born in the year 1970. She will be turning the age of 53 after she celebrates her birthday in 2023. Her full date of birth is unknown. She was born in Sverdlovsk, Russian SFSR, USSR (now Yekaterinburg, Russia). She was named Elena Pisetski by her parents. Her parents’ details are not known. She may have siblings but their information hasn’t been provided.

In 1987, Lena Herzog moved to Leningrad to attend the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University. There, she learned English and Spanish, and literature. She later emigrated to the United States. She graduated with a degree in philosophy from Mills College, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. She was a research consultant at Stanford University.

Lena Began Taking Photographs In The 1990s

Lena Herzog discovered photography in the late 1990s. She started to take photographs in 1997. She studied photographic printing techniques with Italian printer Ivan Dalla Tana in Milan and later with French printer Marc Valesella. She combines some of the very early photographic darkroom processes with contemporary and her own techniques to achieve her desired effects.

Lena Herzog has said: “Whatever it demands—a photograph or an oratorio, a book or an essay, an immersive work or a mural—I give it the form that manifests itself as a necessity. I work on it until some underlying essence begins to appear, a spirit shimmering through the simplest form. The original feeling starts to take shape, and it is usually a question, an opening, a possibility.”

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Lena Herzog loves to travel around the world, exploring a ‘wide range of subjects from pilgrimage and religion, dance and ritual to uncanny geological phenomena, wonder cabinets, and vanishing languages.’ She has worked ranging from classical documentaries to experimental and conceptual. Her work is often expressionist: form alludes to content and vice versa.

Lena Herzog’s work has been published and reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, El País, El Mundo The Believer, The British Journal of Photography, and Cabinet, etc. Her work has been exhibited by major museums and institutions.

Lena Herzog’s work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), the International Center of Photography (New York), and the British Museum, among others. Her notable works include Tauromaquia, Flamenco, Pilgrims, and Lost Souls.

Lena Herzog has led illuminating public lectures, presentations, and conversations about photography, language, rituals, and wonder cabinets worldwide. Her conceptual work was dedicated to the loss of the world’s linguistic diversity and it is called Last Whispers: Oratorio for Vanishing Voices, Collapsing Universes, and A Falling Tree.

Lena Has Worked In Some Movies

Lena Herzog has been involved in the movie industry as an actress and has worked in the Camera and Electrical Department of some films. As an actress, she appeared as Uzoff in the TV Series Nash Bridges. She played the role of Party Guest in Incident at Loch Ness. She also appeared as Woman Photographing Basketball in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (uncredited).

Lena Herzog has worked as a still photographer in ‘2000 Years of Christianity’, ‘Pilgrimage’, ‘Wheel of Time’, ‘Incident at Loch Ness’, ‘Rescue Dawn’, ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’, ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’, ‘Behind the Madness: The Making of ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’, ‘Queen of the Desert’, ‘Family Romance, LLC’, and ‘Theatre of Thought’.

Lena Is The Third wife Of Werner Herzog

Lena Herzog happens to be the wife number three of filmmaker Werner Herzog. Werner has been married three times. He was married to Martje Grohmann, with whom he had a son, Rudolph Amos Achmed. He had a daughter Hanna Mattes, a photographer and painter with his ex-companion, actress Eva Mattes.

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Werner Herzog was married to Christine Maria Ebenberger, mother of their son, Simon Herzog. Werner then married his third and current wife Lena Herzog in 1999. They have been married for over 20 years. Lena became an American citizen, naturalized in 1999. She and Werner have avoided communicating in their mother tongue. They speak English with each other. Werner told The Guardian:

“My wife grew up in Siberia. Her mother tongue is Russian. My mother tongue is Bavarian. Which is not even German, it’s a dialect. But we decided, 25 years ago, that we would not speak in German or Russian to each other. Both of us leave the comfort zone of our language, and we communicate in English.”

He added: “This means that we are very cautious and careful. We are trying to articulate our feelings as closely as we can in a foreign tongue. And the result? In 25 years there has not been a single foul word that has passed between us.” Lena Herzog and her husband Werner Herzog have no children together. They have worked together on several projects.

They even worked on a book of stills from the film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans which was published in 2009. Werner Herzog wrote the introduction to Lena’s book Pilgrims, which was released in 2002. One of Lena’s books is Strandbeest: the Dream Machines of Theo Jansen. She has authored six books/monographs of photography.