Before emigrating in 1929 to New York, James Kriegsmann studied photography in Vienna. He was born in 1909 in Sadagóra, which was part of Austria until the First World War and is today located in Ukraine. Shortly after his arrival in New York he opened the JJK Copy-Art photo studio and photofinishing service at 165 West 46th Street near Times Square and Broadway. JJK stood for his name, James J. Kriegsmann. His photo studio developed into the place where recording artists, big bands and stage and screen stars came to be photographed. His early portraits were theatrical and presented in a pictorialist manner, with decorative frames, though later photographs would be framed with a white border featuring the studio's logo on the right, and, below it, the name of the subject of the photograph.

From the 1940s, several advertisements for JJK Copy-Art can be found in Billboard magazine, featuring such slogans as “There Is No Business Like Show Business” (Billboard, 11 April 1953, p. 5) or “We Deliver What We Advertise” (Billboard, 3 June 1950, p. 27). In 1943, an announcement was printed apologising for being unable to photograph all the people coming to the studio because of the demands of a U.S. Government contract (Billboard, 17 April 1943, p. 5). Billboard's focus was on music while supporting black musicians and artists – a policy also followed by JJK Copy-Art. James Kriegsmann “was the leader in the New York market for artists‘ publicity photographs that exuded class“ (Broven 2011, 364) and became the photographer of stars like Charles Davis, Bill Robinson, Eartha Kitt, Pearl Bailey, Frank Sinatra and Betty Thornton. African-American artists performed “at a time, when most of the white-owned photo studios refused to work with them” (Mallozzi 2010). It is likely that James Kriegsmann was also in-house photographer at the Cotton Club in Harlem (Hirshey 2002, 52; Gayle 2007, 39). A 1936 brochure on the Cotton Club features eight portraits by James Kriegsmann of artists, dancers and musicians. The nightclub was located between 1923 and 1936 in Harlem, at 42nd Street and Lenox Avenue, and operated during the era of Prohibition and racial segregation. Although the Cotton Club featured many black artists, musicians and dancers, like for example Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ethel Waters and Bill Robinson – all photographed by James Kellermann – the club did not allow entry to black people. Although the Cotton Club was also an important contact hub for émigré artists during the 1920s and 1930s (the émigré photographer Ruth Bernhard visited frequently) it was also criticised for its racial segregation. The Cotton Club allowed entry to all races in 1935.

James Kriegsmann operated his portrait studio until his death in 1994 and the tradition of photographic portraits was followed by his son James Kriegsmann Jr., who relocated the business to West 56th Street. In 1998 a series of Kriegsmann portraits became part of the Hebrew Home for the Aged permanent collection founded by the German émigré Ralph Baum, the owner of Modernage Photographic Services. (Raynor 1998)