Few details on the life and shop of Hans Salomon are known today. He was born in 1909 in Celle, the son of Hanny (1880–1942) and Oskar Salomon (1878–1942) and had a twin sister, Grete (1909–?), and an older brother, Gerhard (1907–?). From 1932, his parents had a shop selling outerwear and shoes and Hans Salomon was the owner of the Hasall men’s fashion store at Poststrasse 4 in Celle. Hans Salomon was arrested on 10 November 1938 and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but fortunately was released in December 1938 after undertaking to leave Germany immediately. Since waiting for an American entry visa would have taken too long, he and his wife Berta (1910–2003) decided to emigrate to Shanghai first and wait there for American exit visas. In February 1939, Hans and Berta Salomon and their daughter Ingeborg (1934–2018) left Germany. They took a passage via Genoa to Shanghai, from where they were able to emigrate to New York in 1940 (Strebel 2020, 9).

Through a few articles and the memoirs of the German émigré Kurt Roberg, it is known that Hans Salomon and his family lived in an apartment in the Bronx and that he initially worked at Klein’s department store in Union Square, which offered jobs to new arrivals, but quickly developed a sideline business with a prescription drugs wholesaler (Roberg 2009, 200). Later, probably in 1945, Hans Salomon opened Service Photo Suppliers, his photo equipment shop, at 151 West 19th Street in Chelsea (Roberg 2009, 255). His photo equipment shop can be seen in the network of other photo service suppliers founded by émigrés as Leco, Modernage Photographic Service, Pavelle Laboratories, Spiratone and JJK Copy-Art. The location in Chelsea was close to studio-appartments of émigrés photographers as Lisette Model, Rudy Burckhardt and Ellen Auerbach.

Kurt Roberg (born 1924) knew Salomon from when he lived in Celle. Salomon had been a friend of his father Victor Roberg and the two were deported together to Sachsenhausen. From 1947 until 1957 Kurt Roberg worked at Service Photo Suppliers in a variety of positions: first, as credit manager and later as sales manager. In 1949 he opened Karo-Company, which specialised in the finishing of prefabricated slide frames.
In 1952 Salomon and Roberg returned to Germany for the first time, on a two-month business trip. They explored the European photographic market, visiting a photographic trade show in Paris and the photokina in Cologne. After their return to New York, they began importing German camera systems and lenses.
In July 1953 Kurt Roberg went on a business trip to Central and South America to drum up markets for this new export line, visiting Puerto Rico, Caracas, Curacao, Maracaibo, Colombia, Bogotá, Medellin, Baranquilla, Panama, Havana, San Juan, Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador. He recorded his encounters with a three-dimensional stereo camera as well as colour slides using a Contax camera. Over the following years, making three trips a year, he explored new business opportunities in Latin America. On his first trip he met the German émigré Connie Altman in Caracas, where she was working as a nurse. After subsequent visits, the two became a couple and in 1956 she emigrated to New York, where they married in 1957. In 1958 Kurt Roberg left Photo Service Suppliers.

Service Photo Suppliers wholesale sold a wide variety of photographic equipment of both foreign and domestic manufacture. From 1947, they offered two new types of flash, which developed into successful products. At $7, they were affordable and could be used with camera models such as Kodak, Ansco and the Brownie Reflex. Both flashguns were used with batteries and base bulbs (Morris 1947, 20).