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Fred Stein

  • Always accompanied by his camera, the German émigré photographer Fred Stein discovered New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. His pictures provide an human and multifaceted view of the metropolis.
  • Fred
  • Stein
  • Alfred Stein

  • 03-07-1909
  • Dresden (DE)
  • 27-09-1967
  • New York City (US)
  • PhotographerLawyer
  • Always accompanied by his camera, the German émigré photographer Fred Stein discovered New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. His pictures provide an human and multifaceted view of the metropolis.

    Word Count: 31

  • Fred Stein, Self-portrait, 1941 (© Fred Stein Archive).
  • Fred Stein arrived in New York with his wife Lilo Stein and daughter Marion on 13 June, 1941, after the family had suffered months of uncertainty and anguish. Stein and his wife had left his native Dresden for Paris in 1933 under the pretext of a honeymoon trip and, once there, autodidactically opened a photographic studio in their apartment. When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, they left the French capital. After the German invasion of France in early 1940, Fred Stein was sent to several internment camps, while his wife and daughter found refuge, first in Normandy, then in Brittany, before returning to Paris, thanks to the help of some influential friends. On a two-day departure from the internment camp to Paris, Fred Stein was able to save the Parisian apartment from foreclosure and liquidate it. Stein was held in a prison camp in Saint Nazaire for British expeditionary troops engaged in the fight against Hitler, but, along with some other inmates, managed to escape, dressed in civilian clothes, and make his way along country roads into unoccupied southern French territory. During his flight, Stein sent postcards under an assumed name to Lilo Stein in Paris, in which he spoke about an alleged meeting with a friend in Toulouse. Lilo Stein understood the cryptic message and immediately departed for the South of France. Since she spoke fluent French, she was able to pass herself off as French and travel to Toulouse without a permit. In her suitcase were some of Fred Stein's negatives and photographs. In Toulouse, the family were finally reunited, but endured several months of insecurity and fear of arrest until they were offered help by the Emergency Rescue Committee. Founded in New York in 1940, the organisation had sent the journalist Varian Fry to Marseille to manage the escape of several thousand fugitive artists and intellectuals.

    On 6 May, 1941, the Stein’s were fortunate enough to leave Marseille on board the S.S. Winnipeg bound for New York in the company of several other persecuted photographers, among them the German photographers Josef Breitenbach, Ilse Bing, Yolla Nichlas-Sachs, Monnie Tannen and Fritz Neugass, as well as the Belgian photographer Charles Leirens and the Hungarian photographer Ylla (Neugass 1951). It’s not known if the photographers knew about each other's presence on board. Interestingly, Ilse Bing, Yolla Niclas and Josef Breitenbach took photos on board the S.S. Winnipeg. Unfortunately, the passage involved a number of detours. Suspecting it to be enemy ship of the National Socialists, the Dutch Navy stopped it and all passengers had to be transferred to British internment camps in Trinidad. On 6 June, 1941, the Stern family could finally left Trinidad on board the S.S. Evangeline and arrived on 13 June, 1941. Yolla Niclas-Sachs and Rudolf Sachs took the same ship. Similar detours on the passage had to be experienced by the photographer Lilly Joss, who instead of a crossing to Great Britain had to make a forced stay in Casablanca and in November 1941 reached New York.

    Stein was able to take some of his negatives and photographs with him, but not his camera. However, Lilo Steins's mother, who was already living in California, helped finance the purchase of a new Leica. Restarting life again was not easy for the family. During his early days in New York, Fred Stein spent most of his time trying to sell his photographs of Paris and writing to such organisations as the Amateur Cinema Club, as well as the United Sates government and Varian Fry, in search of addresses and ideas for selling his images. Through his correspondence it is know that he remained in contact with his Paris colleagues and friends, including Ylla, Josef Breitenbach, and Hermann Landshoff, and worked hard to expand his cultural and artistic émigré and American network.
    Stein landed his first big project in 1945 with a calendar for the American Relief for France organisation, featuring photographs of Paris by him. This calendar project was continued in 1948 and 1949, with images of New York by him (Lumen Publisher). From 1942, Stein was able to sell some of his photographs through the Rapho Guillmette photo agency, which he was familiar with from his time in Paris, and started selling his work to and receiving commissions from the PIX photo agency from 1943. He worked as a freelance photographer with the Black Star Agency from October 1943 until the 1950s, which was found by the German émigrés Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld and Ernest Mayer. The agency, which charged a 50% commission fee, allowed him to sell his photographs to a wide range of international magazines, newspapers and books, including U.S. Camera, Minicam Magazine, Time, Colliers, The New York Times, La Victoire, Vogue, Voici, Jews for France, Life, Lilliput, Photography and Popular Photography. Stein's commitment to selling his photographs to as wide a range of publications as possible is reflected in the way he stored them – he called them reportages and ordered them alphabetically according to topic. Other émigré photographers who worked for Black Star were for example Ruth Bernhard, Andreas Feininger, Lilly Joss, Fritz Henle, Carola Gregor (and his husband Fritz Goro), Werner Wolff, Walter Sanders.

    Fascinated by the city, Stein worked most of the time on his own, exploring the streets of the metropolis and capturing the sights he saw in his own personal style. His interest in the human side of city life, with its humorous everyday scenes and many different social categories of citizen are captured in his first US photobook project, 5th Avenue (Pantheon, 1947). Like Fritz Henle, Andreas Feininger, Ellen Auerbach or Rudy Burckhardt as well as other émigrés photographers encountering the city, he walked the city from south to north. For Stein, his camera was an instrument for getting acquainted with the city and artistically capturing in photographs the images and views he encountered. The photobook, which he sent to a number of well-known magazines, organisations and colleagues, was reviewed and written about in a number of articles. The New World Club organised an author’s evening and “Mit der Kamera von der Seine zum Hudson” and Aufbau magazine published an article about him and his new book (Craener 1947). Lilo Stein collected all the reviews and articles in two scrapbooks. We learn from these that he had two minor exhibitions towards the end of the 1940s. One was Art of the Portrait, together with the cartoonist Dolbin, at the Tribune Subway Art Gallery in 1946; another was the Children Photographs exhibition at the Gallery of the Parent’s Magazine (52 Vanderbilt Avenue) in June 1947.

    Stein's sensitive and humane approach and his habit of treating everyone as equals can be seen in his series of portraits of emigrants, intellectuals, artists and politicians. During his lifetime he made more than 1500 of these portraits, spanning a wide range of subjects that included Albert Einstein, Fritz Landshoff (of the Querido Verlag), Hannah Arendt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Anette Kolb, Arnold Schönberg, Leonhard Frank and Alvin Johnson (president of the New School for Social Research). Many of these appeared in Aufbau magazine. In the archive of Fred Stein there are references via business cards and letterheads suggesting that Stein made a couple of attempts to open his own studio as an “illustrative photographer” in the best areas of Manhattan (38 East 65th Street / 119 West 57th Street). The dates and exactly how long these existed are not known, but with the income they generated insufficient to cover the rent, they did not last long.
    Especially after he had to abandon his street photography at the beginning of the 1960s because of hip problems and surgery, portraiture became his principal photographic medium. His ability to gain the trust of his subjects is evident from the close-up shots he took. By the end of his life Stein had produced portraits of most prominent artists, writers, politicians and thinkers of the time, as well as of other individuals who captured his interest. Fred Stein's photographic career is well documented in part through scrapbooks and correspondence, thanks mainly to his wife Lilo Stein, and today in the hands of his son Peter Stein. It is thanks to his efforts that, today, after years of oblivion, his father's work is preserved and on display in international museums.

    Word Count: 1366

  • Fred Stein, El at Water Street, 1946 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Portrait Alvin Saunders Johnson by Fred Stein, New School for Research Archive, Photograph Collection (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Children Photographs exhibition by Fred Stein, April 1947 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Affidavit in Lieu of Passport (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Fred Stein, Anette Kolb, New York, 1945 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Fritz Neugass. “The saga of the S.S. Winnipeg.” Modern Photography, July 1951, pp. 72–73 (Photo: Helene Roth).
    Black Star contract by Fred Stein, April 1, 1944 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    New York 1949 calendar by Fred Stein, Lumen Publisher (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Mixed articles and reviews on 5th Avenue photobook form Fred Stein's scrapbook (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Portrait of Fritz H. Landshoff (of Querido Publishing House) by Fred Stein, 1944 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Portrait of Kurt Wolff (of publishing house Pantheon Books) by Fred Stein, 1959 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Announcement by Pantheon Books from Fred Stein’s scrapbook (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Rapho Guillumette agency letter to Fred Stein, 1944 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Cover of 5th Avenue photobook (Pantheon Books, 1947) by Fred Stein (© Fred Stein Archive).
  • Craener, Vera. "Ein immigrant entdeckt New York. Fred Steins Weg zum Erfolg." Aufbau, 9 May, 1947, p. 27.

    Displaced Visions. Émigré Photographers of the 20th Century, edited by Nissan N. Perez, exh. cat. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2013.

    Eyes on Paris. Paris im Fotobuch 1890 bis heute, edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle, exh. cat. Haus der Photographie in den Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 2011.

    Fred Stein. Dresden, Paris, New York, edited by Erika Eschebach and Helena Weber, exh. cat. Stadtmuseum Dresden, Dresden, 2018.

    Fred Stein. Paris New York, edited by Dawn Freer, exh. cat. Jewish Museum Berlin, Berlin, 2013.

    Neugass, Fritz. “The saga of the S.S. Winnipeg.” Modern Photography, July 1951, pp. 72–75; 86; 88.

    Schaber, Irme. “Fotografie.” Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933–1945, edited by Claus-Dieter Krohn and Patrick von zur Mühlen, WBG, 1998, pp. 970–983.

    Schaber, Irme. “‘Die Kamera ist ein Instrument der Entdeckung…’. Die Großstadtfotografie der fotografischen Emigration in der NS-Zeit in Paris, London und New York.” Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 20: Metropolen des Exils, edited by Claus-Dieter Krohn, edition text + kritik, 2002, pp. 53–73.

    Stein, Fred. 5th Avenue. 100 Photographs. Pantheon, 1947.

    Word Count: 166

  • My deepest thanks go to Peter Stein, the son of Fred Stein, for providing me with information on and material by Fred Stein.

    Word Count: 23

  • Helene Roth
  • Paris, France (1933–1939); New York, US (1941-1967).

  • 610 West 145 Street, Hamilton Heights, Manhattan, New York City (residence and studio, 1941–1952); 420 Lexington Avenue, Black Star Office, Midtown Manhattan, New York (workplace, 1943–1950s); 645 West 160 Street, Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City (residence and studio, 1952–1964); 38 East 65th Street, Lennox Hill, New York City (temporary studio, 1940s?); 119 West 57th Street, Central Park South, Manhattan, New York City (temporary studio, 1950s?).

  • New York
  • Helene Roth. "Fred Stein." METROMOD Archive, 2021, https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/2948/object/5138-8104113, last modified: 06-09-2022.
  • Hermann Landshoff
    Photographer
    New York

    Besides outdoor fashion shots, Hermann Landshoff was a portrait and street photographer. During his time in New York, he captured the cultural, artistic and intellectual émigré scene as well as his photographer colleagues.

    Word Count: 33

    Walter Sanders
    Photographer
    New York

    Walter Sanders was a German émigré photographer. In 1938 he arrived in New York, where he worked from 1939 until the end of his life for the Black Star agency and, from 1944, for Life magazine.

    Word Count: 33

    Kurt Safranski
    Picture AgentFounding MemberTeacherCartoonistPublisherIllustrator
    New York

    Kurt Safranski was one of the founding members of the Black Star photo agency, a teacher at the New School for Social Research and the author of photojournalistic articles and books.

    Word Count: 31

    Josef Breitenbach
    Photographer
    New York

    On arriving in New York in 1941, the German photographer Josef Breitenbach tried to restart as a portrait, street and experimental photographer, as well as a teacher of photo-history and techniques.

    Word Count: 30

    Andreas Feininger
    PhotographerWriterEditor
    New York

    Andreas Feininger, was a German émigré photographer who arrived in New York with his wife Wysse Feininger in 1939. He started a lifelong career exploring the city's streets, working as a photojournalist and writing a large number of photography manuals.

    Word Count: 39

    Lisette Model
    Photographer
    New York

    Lisette Model was an Austrian-born photographer who lived in New York with her husband Evsa Model after emigrating from France. Her street photographs capturing the curiosities of everyday life quickly caught the interest of museums and magazines.

    Word Count: 37

    Charles Leirens
    PhotographerMusicianMusicologist
    New York

    Charles Leirens was a Belgian-born musician and photographer who emigrated to New York in 1941. While publishing two books on Belgian music, he also gave courses in musicology and photography at the New School for Social Research.

    Word Count: 36

    Rolf Tietgens
    PhotographerEditorWriter
    New York

    Rolf Tietgens was a German émigré photographer who arrived in New York in 1938. Although, in the course of his photographic career, his artistic and surrealist images were published and shown at exhibitions, his work, today, is very little known.

    Word Count: 39

    Tim Gidal
    PhotographerPublisherArt Historian
    New York

    Tim Gidal was a German-Jewish photographer, publisher and art historian emigrating in 1948 emigrated to New York. Besides his teaching career, he worked as a photojournalist and, along with his wife Sonia Gidal, published youth books.

    Word Count: 35

    Ylla
    Photographer
    New York

    Ylla was an Austrian-born photographer who emigrated to New York in 1941. Specialising in animal photography, she produced not only studio photographs, but also shot outside on urban locations in the metropolis.

    Word Count: 31

    Fritz Henle
    Photographer
    New York

    Fritz Henle was a German Jewish photographer who emigrated in 1936 to New York, where he worked as a photojournalist for various magazines. He also published several photobooks of his travels throughout North America and Asia.

    Word Count: 35

    Kurt Kornfeld
    PublisherPicture AgentFounding Member
    New York

    Kurt Kornfeld was a publisher and literary agent and a founding member of the Black Star photo agency in New York City after his emigration in 1936 to New York.

    Word Count: 29

    Ernest Mayer
    Picture AgentFounding MemberPublisher
    New York

    Ernest Mayer was co-founder of the Black Star Publishing Company photo agency, which built a network for émigré photographers and the American magazine scene from the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s.

    Word Count: 34

    Carola Gregor
    PhotographerSculptor
    New York

    The German émigré photographer Carola Gregor was an animal and child photographer and published some of her work in magazines and books. Today her work and life are almost forgotten.

    Word Count: 30

    Rudy Burckhardt
    PhotographerFilmmakerPainter
    New York

    Rudy Burckhardt was a Swiss-born photographer, filmmaker and painter who emigrated from Basle to New York City in 1935. He was well networked within the emerging Abstract Expressionist art scene of 1940s' and 50s'.

    Word Count: 33

    T. Lux Feininger
    PhotographerPainter
    New York

    Lux T. Feininger was a German-American émigré photographer and painter and the brother of the photographer Andreas Feininger, arriving in 1936 in New York. Although he started taking photographs during the 1920s in Germany, Feininger is better known for his career as a painter and his photographic work is largely unacknowledged.

    Word Count: 50

    Trude Fleischmann
    Photographer
    New York

    Trude Fleischmann was an Austrian-Jewish portrait and dance photographer who emigrated in 1939 to New York, where she opened a studio in Midtown Manhattan with the photographer Frank Elmer.

    Word Count: 28

    Henry Rox
    PhotographerSculptor
    New York

    Henry Rox was a German émigré sculptor and photographer who, in 1938, arrived in New York with his wife, the journalist and art historian Lotte Rox (née Charlotte Fleck), after an initial exile in London. Besides his work as a sculptor, he began creating humorous anthropomorphised fruit and vegetable photographs.

    Word Count: 50

    Manhattan Magic. A collection of eighty-five photographs
    Photobook
    New York

    Manhattan Magic is a photobook which was published in 1937 by the German émigré photographer Mario Bucovich in New York City.

    Word Count: 20

    New York
    BookPhotobook
    New York

    In 1932, after her remigration to Vienna, the Austrian journalist Ann Tizia Leitich published New York, an account of her life and writing experiences started as an emigrant in New York in the 1920s.

    Word Count: 33

    Chinatown U.S.A.
    Photobook
    New York

    Chinatown U.S.A. is a photobook published by the German émigré photographer Elizabeth Coleman in 1946 focusing on American-Chinese communities in New York and San Francisco.

    Word Count: 26

    5th Avenue
    Photobook
    New York

    5th Avenue was the first photobook by Fred Stein and was created in 1947 with the publishing house Pantheon Books.

    Word Count: 19

    Black Star Agency
    Photo Agency
    New York

    The German émigrés Kurt S(z)afranski, Ern(e)st Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld founded Black Star in 1936. The photo agency established was a well-run networking institution in New York.

    Word Count: 31

    PIX Publishing Inc.
    Photo Agency
    New York

    PIX Publishing Inc. was a photo agency founded in New York in 1935 by photo agent Leon Daniel and Celia Kutschuk, together with German émigré photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and George Karger.

    Word Count: 30

    J.J. Augustin Incorporated Publisher
    Publishing House
    New York

    J.J. Augustin was a German publishing house in Glückstadt with a long history, going back to 1632. In 1936 the American branch opened in New York with a large artistic and cultural focus.

    Word Count: 33

    Pantheon Books
    Publishing House
    New York

    Pantheon Books was a publishing house founded in 1942 by the German émigré Kurt Wolff (1887–1963) and aimed at the exiled European community in New York.

    Word Count: 24

    New School for Social Research
    Academy/Art SchoolPhoto SchoolUniversity / Higher Education Institute / Research Institute
    New York

    During the 1940s and 1950s emigrated graphic designers and photographers, along with artists and intellectuals, were given the opportunity to held lectures and workshops at the New School for Social Research.

    Word Count: 31

    Rapho Guillumette
    Photo Agency
    New York

    Founded in 1940 by the emigrant Charles Rado (1899–1970), Rapho Guillumette was a picture agency.

    Word Count: 13

    Querido Inc.
    Publishing House
    New York

    Fritz H. Landshoff’s Querido publishing house was originally an offshoot of Emanuel Querido's Querido Uitgeverij Dutch publishing house in Amsterdam. Querido Verlag was created in 1933 to publish work by German political exiles.

    Word Count: 33

    Werner Wolff
    Photographer
    New York

    Werner Wolff was forced to leave Germany in 1936 due to his Jewish background and emigrated via Hamburg to New York, where he could follow his career as photographer and photojournalist.

    Word Count: 30

    Ruth Bernhard
    Photographer
    New York

    Ruth Bernhard was a German émigré photographer who lived in New York from the 1920s to the 1940s. Beside her series on female nudes, her place in the photography network, as well as in the New York queer scene, is unknown and understudied.

    Word Count: 43

    Ellen Auerbach
    Photographer
    New York

    When she arrived in New York in 1937, the German-born photographer Ellen Auerbach (formerly Rosenberg) had already passed through exile stations in Palestine and Great Britain.

    Word Count: 25

    Lilly Joss
    Photographer
    New York

    Lilly Joss was an émigré freelance photographer in New York. She worked for the Black Star photo agency and magazines and was also a portrait and theatre photographer.

    Word Count: 28