most talented journalists to emigrate to the United
States where they had an immediate and profound
influence on journalistic practice. Three among
them were the founders of Black Star: Ernest
Mayer, director of the Mauritius Publishing Com-
pany, one of Germany’s most successful photo
agencies; Kurt Safranski, manager of the legendary
Ullstein group of magazines; and Kurt Kornfeld, a
literary agent.
As it happened, the three German e ́migre ́s arrived
just as the world of American magazines was being
transformed by publishers such as Henry Luce of
Time, Inc. and Mike Cowles of the Des Moines,
IowaRegisterandTribune. Convinced that the pub-
lic’s appetite for the visual mandated a different
approach to illustrated journalism, Luce and Cow-
les were determined to produce national magazines
in which the photograph and the photographic
essay reigned supreme. Luce won the race to pro-
duce America’s first large-format picture magazine;
the first issue ofLifehit the newsstands in Novem-
ber 1936. Cowles’sLookfollowed in February 1937.
In the year before the publication of the first issue
ofLife, Luce relied on advice and counsel from
Black Star, and early editions of the magazine near-
ly always contained work produced by Black Star
photographers. This is hardly surprising since Time,
Inc. had agreed to pay Black Star a minimum of
$5,000 a year for first refusal rights on all Black Star
photographs not taken expressly for other publica-
tions. In addition, Luce’s company agreed to pay
extra to secure first rights on all photographs im-
ported from Europe by the agency.
The phenomenal impact of Lifeand Cowles’s
Lookled to a proliferation of photographically-illu-
strated magazines and to the early success of Black
Star. Most of the new picture magazines kept their
staffs small, preferring instead to purchase images
from agencies like Black Star that had connections
with photographers and other agencies around the
world. For instance, before the United States went
to war in 1941, Black Star had a curious and special
arrangement with Deutscher Verlag, the official
Nazi news agency. For years, Black Star received
photographs of the German army nearly every day
in the mail. AtLifeone bureau chief remembered
that in the early days the magazine ‘‘needed Black
Star more than they needed us.’’ And it was not
simply access to the occasional exclusive photo-
graph that mattered, forLifealso ‘‘needed their
stories for our files, their contacts, their staff for
assignments, and their pictures.’’ The relationship
between the agency and the magazine was so sym-
biotic that some of Black Star’s most talented photo-
graphers—Ralph Crane, Andreas Feininger, Fritz
Goro, Walt Sanders, Bill Ray, and Burk Uzzle—
eventually joined the staff atLife.
While the initial success of Black Star undoubt-
edly lay in what historian Hendrik Neubauer calls
‘‘the enormous appetite which magazines world-
wide had for photographs,’’ there is much more to
the story. Even in the heyday of the big picture
magazines likeLifeandLook, the agency sought
to widen its client base to include corporate and
advertising photography, which is far more remu-
nerative than traditional news and documentary
photography. Since the demise of the large-format
picture magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, the need
to include corporate and advertising photography
in the work of the agency is clear, though not uni-
versally appreciated. Howard Chapnick, the legend-
ary president of the agency from 1964 to 1989, noted
with some frustration that in spite of the ‘‘large
number of publications using photography,’’ com-
paratively few have any use for the kind of ‘‘exten-
sive documentary picture stories’’ that were once the
mainstay of the business.
Ben Chapnick, Howard’s first cousin and succes-
sor as president of the agency, concurs. ‘‘It is quite
apparent to me,’’ he told Hendrik Neubauer, ‘‘that
without the corporate business and its expansion
since 1960,’’ Black Star might have managed to
eke out a narrow existence as ‘‘a much smaller
entity’’ or ceased to exist altogether. Instead, by re-
cognizing both the necessity and value of producing
commercial photography, the agency assures that
its photographers will continue to work, even
though their journalistic and documentary efforts
no longer bring in the kind of income they once did.
Black Star’s importance in the history of twenti-
eth-century photography is unquestioned. Begin-
ning with its early association withLifemagazine,
the agency became one of the most important sup-
pliers of news and feature photography to newspa-
pers, magazines, books, and corporations around
the world. The photographers represented by the
agency were and are at the top of the profession;
many, such as W. Eugene Smith, David and Peter
Turnley, John Launois, Claus Meyer, and Charles
Moore have rightly achieved considerable fame. The
approximately 350 men and women now associated
withtheagencyproduceadauntingarrayofworkfor
journalistic and commercial clients worldwide, and
Black Star’s enormous collection of stock photo-
graphs constitutes a stunning visual history of the
world since the mid-1930s.MICHAELCARLEBACH
Seealso:Archives; Feininger, Andreas; Life Maga-
zine; Look; Uzzle, BurkBLACK STAR