Erwin Blumenfeld Books

By turns acerbic, self-mocking, playful, even absurd, the autobiography of Erwin Blumenfeld, one of the century’s best-known photographers, is a compelling, virtuoso account of an extraordinary man. All his subjects - his Jewish family, the Germans, the Vichy French, his models, New York publishers - are dealt equal measures of wit, mockery and merciless irony. He spares himself least of all. Born in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Blumenfeld was drafted in to serve in the First World War, first as an ambulance driver (although he couldn’t drive), and then as a book-keeper at a field brothel. Between the wars he became part of an avant-garde circle that included such artists as George Grosz, and members of the Dada movement. During the Second World War, Blumenfeld was interned in a series of French camps, but eventually arrived in New York, where he found work with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, producing some of their most memorable covers and becoming fashion’s highest-paid photographer. By the creator of some of the most striking and influential photographs ever taken, Blumenfeld’s autobiography is a biting and iconoclastic take on the century. Gripping and full of insight, it is the story of an exceptional life.

By the mid-1950s, Erwin Blumenfeld's fame had spread throughout the USA and Europe to make him the world's most highly paid photographer. This study discusses the life and work of this extraordinary man. Highly inventive, he developed his own idiosyncratic language, using solarization and negative printing, double and multiple exposures and a host of hybrid techniques. The work also brings together a retrospective selection of Blumenfeld's diverse achievements including drawings, collages and photographs of all genres.