66 20 July 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113Legends
of photography
I
n 1907, aged 10, Erwin
Blumenfeld received
his first camera; it was
from his Uncle Carl. He
explained, ‘My real life started
with the discovery of chemical
magic, the play of light and
shade, the two-edged problem
of negative and positive.Erwin
Blumenfeld
I had a good photographer’s
eye right from the start.’
But Blumenfeld’s journey
to becoming a world-class
photographer was far
from smooth.
Hit hard by the deaths
of his father, from syphilis,
and brother Heinz, at war,In 1936 he moved to
Paris and, thanks to a
recommendation from
legendary fashion
photographer Cecil Beaton,
Blumenfeld began shooting for
French Vog ue in 1938. Owing
to his Jewish heritage, he was
interned in concentration
camps in the early years of
the Second World War, but he
finally managed to move his
family to the USA, arriving in
August 1941.
Almost immediately
Blumenfeld got work from
Harper’s Bazaar and shared a
New York City studio with the
Hungary-born photographer
Martin Munkácsi. After
establishing his own NYC
studio in 1943, Blumenfeld
became sought after as a
fashion photographer and shot
for Harper’s Bazaar, Look,
LIFE, Vog ue and many more.
In the mid-1950s he veered
towards advertising work
and shot for the likes of
L’Oréal, Elizabeth Arden
and Helena Rubenstein.
The ‘five glove’ image shown
here was shot for Vog ue in
1950 and – like the work of his
contemporaries such as Irving
Penn, Norman Parkinson and
Horst P Horst – it could easily
have been shot yesterday, such
is the timeless nature of
Blumenfeld’s photographs.
Blumenfeld died of a
self-induced heart attack
in Rome in 1969, but half a
century later he deserves his
place among the true greats of
fashion photography. In a 1958
issue of US magazine Popular
Photography, Blumenfeld
wrote, ‘Currently I am
absorbed in magazine and
advertising illustration and
I remain as true an amateur
as I was at 10. The wonder that
the camera can really produce
anything shown to it still
astounds me.’ His innovative
body of work still astounds
today, mainly through
regular exhibitions
around the world.Steve Fairclough on the career that
earned Erwin Blumenfeld a place in the
pantheon of fashion photographers
Blumenfeld planned to desert
the German army before being
reported by his Uncle Bruno.
In 1918 he moved to the
Netherlands and, after
dalliances in the worlds of
fashion and Dadaism, in
1921 he set up a leather goods
shop in Amsterdam and
started taking photographs,
which he developed in a
darkroom that he discovered
at the back of the shop.
He continued to live in the
Netherlands for some years
and had his first exhibitions in
1932 and 1934 in Amsterdam.
In 1935, his first published
photograph – a portrait of Tara
Twain – was in Arts et Métiers
Graphiques magazine, but it
was only after the bankruptcy
of his leather shop that he
decided to turn to photography
full time.© ERWIN BLUMENFELD/CONDÉ NAST VIA GETT Y IMAGES
© TIME & LIFE PICTURES
Model sitting,
wearing five gloves,
one length or another‘It could easily
have been shot
yesterday, such is the
timeless nature of
Blumenfeld’s work’