Barbara Pflaum (1912–2002) was one of the few women who worked as photojournalists for pictorial magazines in the 1950s. Men dominated this profession in the first two postwar decades, while women in Europe and the United States returned to domestic life. This was not the case for Pflaum, who came across photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she had taken up studies as a 40-year-old divorcée with three children. Her photographs garnered the attention of several people. In 1954 she published her first reports—about Venice and about an experimental school in Sweden—in the Wiener Illustrierte newspaper. A short time later, she was hired as a photographer for the Wochenpresse weekly, where she worked for over 20 years. She and her classic Rolleiflex medium format camera could be found at most theater and opera openings, vernissages, and most of all at political events.