FELIX H. MAN
German
Like Erich Salomon, Wolfgang Weber and a few
other photographers, Felix H. Man appeared as a
leading exponent of the modern photojournalism
that made his breakthrough in the weekly press of
Germany toward the end of the 1920s. He was a
member of the famous German photo agency
Dephot(Deutscher Photodienst) and soon became
a leading figure in the development of the British
illustrated press. His significance to the history of
photography lies as well in the area of color photo-
graphy and also in the advancement of art histor-
ical scholarship. From the 1950s on, he was more
interested in art history, which he had studied
before 1920. He wrote books about graphic art,
and from 1961–1975 he was editor ofEuropa ̈ische
Graphik, a series of portfolios of original artworks.
Felix H. Man was born as Hans Felix Sigismund
Baumann on November 30, 1893 in Freiburg/Breis-
gau in Germany. His family came from Riga,
which was at that time part of Imperial Russia.
When he was 10, his father gave him his first cam-
era. He soon was taking pictures of anything he
saw, and he started to develop and print the pic-
tures himself in a cellar darkroom. In 1912, he
matriculated and studied art and art history, and
his camera became less important to him. During
his service in the German army between 1914 and
1918 in World War I, he took up photography
again. Almost all the pictures of this period, mainly
taken in the trenches and behind the lines, were lost
during the bombing of World War II.
In 1926, Man moved to Berlin and worked for
the publishing house Ullstein Verlag as an illustra-
tor. He was drawing at that time, but soon he
began to find that the growing market for his
photographs was pushing his drawing aside. By
the end of the 1920s, he became production chief
of the photojournalism department of Dephot,
founded by Simon Guttman and Alfred Marx and
serving various daily papers. Joining him there
were Walter Bossard and Kurt Hu ̈bschmann,
later known as Kurt Hutton ofPicture Post.
Around 1930, Man was working for theMu ̈nchner
Illustrierte Presse(MIP) and the Berliner Illustrirte
Zeitung(BIZ), both rapidly growing and in keen com-
petition. His main subjects were on one hand, portraits
of statesmen, artists, musicians in action, imposing
theatrical productions; and, on the other hand, the
simple life of villages and their inhabitants or the streets
of Munich, Berlin, or London to which he traveled on
assignments. Unlike Wolfgang Weber, Harald Lechen-
perg, or Walter Bossard, who were traveling worldwide
as photojournalists, Man was largely confined to work
on the continent and in England, although he later
traveled to North and South America and India.
From 1930 to 1931, he went to Italy and made his
famous reportageA Day with Mussolini, printed on
five pages in theMIPand widely reprinted.
Between 1929 and 1931, theMIPpublished over
80 reports by Man. At this time, he worked very
close with Stephan Lorant, chief editor of theMIP
and an important figure of the new photojournal-
ism of the 1920s and 1930s. When the Nazis took
over Ullstein Verlag in 1934, Man emigrated to
England, where he again met Stephan Lorant
working for the magazine Weekly Illustratedin
London. After six months, Man left the paper
and over the next three years had a difficult time.
Unable to obtain a work permit, he was forced to
leave England every three months. (In 1948 he
finally became a British citizen.) He shot photo-
graphs for theDaily Mirror, film companies, fash-
ion magazines, and for the pocket magazine
Lilliput, which Lorant had started in London.
In October 1938, Stephan Lorant foundedPic-
ture Post, and Felix Man and Kurt Hutton joined
him as photographers. From the beginning,Picture
Postwas a great success, and Man sometimes had
more than three substantial reportages. Although
Lorant left Europe for the United States in 1940,
Man continued to work forPicture Post, leaving
for a short time to try to start a new magazine and
to study the problems and possibilities of color
photography. He returned toPicture Postin 1948,
principally to produce color picture stories.
At the beginning of the 1950s, Man again left
Picture Postand completed some color assignments
for U.S.-basedLifeandSports Illustratedmaga-
zines. He also began concentrating on art subjects,
and he made studies of a number of famous artists
at work in their studios, among them painters Pablo
Picasso and Georges Braque, architect Le Corbu-MAN, FELIX H.