Archive

Start Over

Black Star Agency

  • 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.
  • Black Star Agency
  • Black Star

  • Photo Agency
  • 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

  • No group image exists of the three German émigrés, Kurt S(z)afranski, Ern(e)st Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld, who founded The Black Star publishing agency in 1936. The agency established itself as a well-run networking institution for emigrant and local photographers in New York. The agency was located in the Graybar Building at 420 Lexington Avenue, near Grand Central Station. This central location in Midtown Manhattan provided quick and easy accessibility for photographers and customers and also benefited from being in the immediate vicinity of other photo agencies (Rapho Guillemette, PIX., Three Lions Press, Camera Feature, Photo Representatives, Monkmayer, European Picture Service), photo labs (Leco Photo Service, Service Photo Suppliers, Modernage, Spiratone, Pavelle Laboratories) and the headquarters of several magazines (Life, Look, Popular Photography, Graphic House). Its proximity to Grand Central Station was also important when sending and receiving photographs by train. Interestingly, a number of other photo agencies, such as Ewing Galloway, had their offices in the Graybar Building, which also housed the headquarters of Condé Nast (Vogue, Glamour), as well as such magazines as This Week Magazine, U.S. Camera and Esquire. This accumulation of photo agencies and media outlets allowed picture agents to move from business to business simply by changing floors. With the economy depleted after the Great Depression, many buildings stood empty. It is for this reason that Black Star was excused from paying rent for the first six months of tenancy. Today, the Graybar Building is still connected to Grand Central Station and is occupied by a wide range of different offices.

    The aim of the photojournalistic agency was to foster an economic network between photographers and the magazines/newspapers developing new visual aesthetics for photo stories. Safranski, Meyer and Kornfeld were in close contact with the newly-founded Life magazine (1937) and played a major role in establishing photojournalism in New York. With the increasing demand for images coming from the magazines, photo agencies such as Black Star were able to deliver high quality photographic reproductions in quantity. The funding of such collaborations benefited from the large amount of press images that had “emigrated” from Ernest Mayer’s erstwhile Mauritius photo agency in Berlin to New York (the pictures can be found in the Online Collection of the Ryerson Image Center) and from the existing links to European photo agencies who could deliver images of Europe to New York. Kornfeld, Mayer and Safranzki had already been embedded in the German publishing and media sector in the 1920s and new each other from their times in Germany. Kornfeld worked as an editing publisher and Safranski was the manager of the Ullstein magazine publishing house in Berlin, while Mayer worked for Rowohlt and later found his own publishing company and photo agency Mauritius. Also in 1936 Black Star opened a European branch in London in response to  the high demand for foreign images in the US and the need for a managing office.

    The "black star" logo and stamp can today be found on the back of many photos taken by émigré photographers working for and with the agency. These include Fred Stein, Walter Sanders (Süßmann), Ruth Bernhard, Andreas Feininger, Fritz Goro (the husband of Carola Gregor), Ilse Bing, Fritz Henle, Herbert Matter, Roman Vishniac, Lilly Joss Reich, Trude Geiringer, Lisa Rothschild (Larsen), Kurt Severin, Werner Wolff, as well as many more. For all of them, Black Star, as a German-speaking agency, provided a great starting point when they first arrived in the United States, allowing them both to earn money from their photography and to enter the New York photojournalism scene. Furthermore, Black Star achieved in establishing an international network and cooperated with many émigrés photographers as for example with Ernst Schaeffer in Bombay.

    In addition to the work he did for the agency, Kurt Safranzki also held workshops such as “Pictorial Journalism“ at the New School for Social Research and published a photo-manual Selling Your Pictures (Ziff Davis Publishing, 1940).
    As the agency saw itself as a business, the images were collected by topic rather than by photographer and are held according to this system at the Collection of the Ryerson Image Center – unfortunately, almost all of the correspondence was deleted, making it difficult for today's researchers into the history of this émigré photo agency.

    Word Count: 711

  • 420 Lexington Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York City (1936–1957); 305 East 47th Street, Tudor City, New York City (1957–1963).

  • Letterhead of Black Star (Black Star Archive. Ryerson Image Center, Photo: Helene Roth).
  • Logo and Stamp of Black Star Photo Agency (Photo: Helene Roth, 2019).
    Description of Black Star in a photographic guide (Ahlers, Arvel W.. Where & how to sell your pictures. Photography Publishing Corp., 1953, p. 45).
    Werner Wolff, K.S. Safranski’s Class in Pictorial Journalism, 1950 (New School for Research Archive, Photograph Collection © Steven Wolff).
    Facade and entrance of the Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue (Photo: Helene Roth, 2018).
    Cover of Selling Your Pictures by Kurt Safranski (Ziff Davis Publishing Company, 1940).
    Black Star contract by Fred Stein, April 1, 1944 (© Fred Stein Archive).
    Announcement of "Pictorial Journalism. Photographs as a Language and their special Problems" course by Kurt Safranski at the New School for Social Research, Spring 1949 (© The New School Archives and Special Collection, The New School, New York).
    Letterhead with the logo and address of Black Star (© Fred Stein Archive).
  • Bouqueret, Christian. Des années folles. Aux années noires. La nouvelle vision photographique en France 1920–1940. Marval, 1997.

    Chapnick, Howard. Truth Needs No Ally. Inside Photojournalism. University of Missouri Press, 1994.

    Gervais, Thierry. The Making of Visual News. A History of Photography in the Press. Translated by John Tittenson, Bloomsbury, 2017.

    Gilbert, George. The Illustrated Worldwide Who’s Who of Jews in Photography. G. Gilbert, 1996.

    Kornfeld, Phoebe. Passionate Publishers. The Founders of the Black Star Photo Agency. University of Missouri Press, 2021.

    Krohn, Claus-Dieter, editor. Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 21: Film und Fotografie. edition text + kritik, 2003.

    Manco, Sara L. Finding Wolff: Intellectually Arranging the Werner Wolff Fonds at the Ryerson Image Centre (master thesis, Ryerson Image Center, Toronto, 2012), Paper 1264.

    Morris, John Godfrey. Get the Picture. A Personal History of Photojournalism. University of Chicago Press, 2002.

    Neubauer, Hendrik. Black Star. 60 Years of Photojournalism. Könemann, 1997.
    New York Photography 1890–1950. Von Stieglitz bis Man Ray, edited by Ortrud Westheider and Michael Philipp, exh. cat Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 2012.

    Oels, David, and Ute Schneider, editors. “Der ganze Verlag ist einfach eine Bonbonniere”: Ullstein in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. De Gruyter, 2014.

    Ream, Tim. The Life Of Werner Wolff: An Analysis Of Werner Wolff’s Contributions To Life Magazine (master thesis). Ryerson University, Toronto, 2014. Digital Repository Ryerson University.

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

    Torosian, Michael. Black Star. The Ryerson University Historical Print Collection of the Black Star Publishing Company. Portfolio Selection and Chronicle of a New York Photo Agency. Lumiere Press, 2013.

    Vowinckel, Annette. “German (Jewish) Photojournalists in Exile. A Story of Networks and Success.” German History, vol. 31, no. 4, December 2013, pp. 473–496.

    Word Count: 275

  • Database Collection Black Star Archive. Database Collection. Ryerson Image Center, University of Toronto.
    Fred Stein Archive.

    Josef Breitenbach Archive, 1873–1990. AG 90. Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, Tucson. Ruth Bernhard Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.  

    W.G. Smith Archive, Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, Tuscon.

    Werner Wolff Archive, Ryerson Image Center, University of Toronto.

    Word Count: 59

  • My deepest thanks go to Peter Stein for providing me with photographs and archival material of the Estate of Fred Stein, to Steven Wolff of the Estate of Werner Wolff and to the Ryerson Image Center.

    Word Count: 36

  • Helene Roth
  • 1936
  • 1963
  • Ruth Bernhard, Fritz Goro, Carola Gregor, Fritz Henle, Andreas Feininger, Lilly Joss, Walter Sanders, Ernst Schaeffer, Fred Stein, Walter Sanders, Werner Wolff and many more.

  • New York
  • No
  • Helene Roth. "Black Star Agency." METROMOD Archive, 2021, https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/2948/object/5145-8103043, last modified: 22-09-2021.
  • 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

    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

    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

    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

    Fred Stein
    PhotographerLawyer
    New York

    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

    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

    Lotte Jacobi
    Photographer
    New York

    In October 1935 the German émigré photographer Lotte Jacobi, together with her sister Ruth Jacobi, opened a photo studio on 57th Street. The two sisters had to leave their parents' photo studio in Berlin in the 1930s and emigrated to New York.

    Word Count: 41

    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

    Ruth Jacobi
    Photographer
    New York

    Ruth Jacobi was a German-speaking, Polish-born photographer who emigrated in 1935 to New York, where she opened a studio together with her sister Lotte Jacobi. She later had her own portrait studio.

    Word Count: 31

    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

    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

    Ruth Staudinger
    PhotographerCinematographerArt dealer
    New York

    Very few and only fragmentary details can be found on the German émigré photographer Ruth Staudinger, who emigrated in the mid-1930s to New York City. Her nomadic life was also characterisedd by several changes of name along the way.

    Word Count: 40

    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

    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 World's Fair postcard View of the Constitution Mall looking toward statue of George Washington and Trylon and Perisphere
    Postcard
    New York

    Shortly after the arrival in New York in 1939, photographs by the German émigré Ernest Nash were used and reproduced for postcards of the New York’s World’s Fair.

    Word Count: 29

    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

    Leco Photo Service
    Photo Lab
    New York

    Leco Photo Service was a photofinishing lab, highly-frequented and a contact hub for émigré photographers and photo agencies during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as a provider of employment for women in the photo industry.

    Word Count: 36

    Schocken Books
    Publishing House
    New York

    Schocken Books was a publishing house established in 1945 in New York by the Russian émigré Salman Schocken (1898–1959). It specialised in books on Judaica and Hebrew topics.

    Word Count: 26

    Oceana Publications
    Publishing House
    New York

    Oceana Publications Inc was a publishing house specialising in law and civil rights founded by the British émigré Philip F. Cohen (1911–1998) in 1945.

    Word Count: 22

    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

    Three Lions Inc.
    Photo Agency
    New York

    Little is known about this photo agency, which was founded by two German émigré brothers, Max Georg and Walter Löwenherz in 1937 in New York

    Word Count: 25

    Photo-Representatives
    Photo Agency
    New York

    Photo-Representatives was a photo agency founded by the photographers Erika Stone and Anita Beer in 1953.

    Word Count: 15

    European Picture Service
    Photo Agency
    New York

    The European Picture Service was a photo agency located in Midtown Manhattan founded, probably in 1930, by the émigré photographer Max Peter Haas (1901–1985).

    Word Count: 22

    Pavelle Laboratories Inc.
    Photo LabPhoto Supplier
    New York

    Pavelle Laboratories was found in 1936 by Leo and Carmen Pavelle and operated on East 42nd Street. It was specialised in the development of miniature camera film and one of the first labs working with colour film.

    Word Count: 36

    Modernage Photographic Services Inc
    Photo Lab
    New York

    Modernage Photographic Services was founded in 1944 by the German émigrés Ralph and Leuba Baum and specialised in photofinishing services. In 1954 a second branch, Modernage Custom Darkrooms, was opened.

    Word Count: 29

    Monkmeyer Photo Service
    Photo Agency
    New York

    The Monkmeyer Photo Service photo agency was founded around 1935/36 by the German émigrés Hilde and Paul August Monkmeyer in New York City.

    Word Count: 23

    Ernst N. Schaeffer
    JournalistPhotojournalistTour GuideEditorRadio ModeratorNewspaper Correspondent
    Bombay

    In exile Ernst Schaeffer diversified his journalistic practice and developed an understanding of Bombay through walking the city streets, taking on street-level-photography and photojournalism.

    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

    Camera Features
    Photo Agency
    New York

    Camera Features was a photo agency founded by the photographer Werner Wolff and other colleagues of the photo agency PIX.

    Word Count: 20

    Service Photo Suppliers Inc.
    Photo Supplier
    New York

    Service Photo Suppliers was a photo supplier distributing a wide variety of photo equipment and opened by the German émigré Hans Salomon (1909–?) in 1945.

    Word Count: 23

    Spiratone
    Photo Supplier
    New York

    Spiratone was a photo company and photo supplier founded in 1941 by the Austrian émigré family Hans (1888–1944) and Paula Spira (?–?) and their son Fred Spira (1924–2007).

    Word Count: 24

    Black Star Publishing Company London
    Photo Agency
    London

    The 1936 New York-founded Black Star Publishing Company photo agency opened a European branch in London the same year in response to the high demand for foreign images in the U.S.

    Word Count: 31