as computer components, revealing their power and
expression. Hartmann who exhibited in Austria, Hol-
land, Germany, Italy, and Japan, was firmly com-
mitted to the Magnum collective, serving on the
board and as president, and is attributed to being
the first to bring the techniques of photojournalism
to corporate assignments.
The first child of a prosperous, middle-class Jewish
couple, Hartmann was born in 1922 in Munich, and
made his first photo in 1930. He fled Germany with
his family to Albany, New York, when he was 16
years old. There, he worked in a textile mill and
attended evening high school and night classes at
Siena College. Hartmann served in the U.S. Army
in England, took part in the invasion of Normandy,
and after the war he served in Civil Affairs as an
interpreter in Belgium and Germany. In 1946, he
moved to New York City, married Ruth Bains, and
began working for two years as an assistant portrait
photographer before turning freelance. After meeting
Robert Capa in 1951, he was invited to join Magnum
Photos a year later and continued to develop his
documentary focus. Although he never formally
trained as a photographer, he was influenced by the
work of photographer and prominent art director
Alexey Brodovitch, Berenice Abbott, and Belgium
photographer Charles Leirens at the New School
for Social Research, and Werner Bischof and the
Farm Security Administration photographers such
as Ivan Massar and Clyde (‘‘Red’’) Hare.
As a freelance photographer based in New York
City, Hartmann generated photo essays and reports
for major magazines in the United States, France,
Germany, Italy, and Japan. His photo essays were
published in major magazines including main-
stream news and business magazines such asFor-
tune,Life,Time,Newsweek,Business Week,The
New York Times Magazine,Paris-Match,Die Zeit,
Stern, travel and leisure publications such asVen-
ture,Vogue,Travel and Leisure,Connoisseur, and
science publications such asGEO, and included
general interest and topics related to high technol-
ogy, genetics, electronics, and scientific themes.
Hartmann also developed corporate and advertis-
ing clients, including Litton Industries, Pillsbury,
RCA, Ford Motor Company, IBM, Boeing, and
Schlumberger. Hartmann took both color and
black and white on assignment depending on the
project. He also carried with him a 35 mm camera
loaded with black and white film, and a couple of
extra rolls that he shot to document his life on
assignment and personal aspects of his life. Hart-
mann was an early colorist and for a period of time
specialized in laser photographs that were exhibited
in Europe and the United States. He mastered a
technique that allowed him to alter angles of the
photograph without distorting the object.
In the fine-arts area, Hartmann had his first one-
man show ‘‘Sunday Under the Bridge’’ at the Museum
of the City of New York in 1956, and he continued
exhibiting worldwide throughout his career, both inde-
pendently and in Magnum Photos presentations.
Membership in Magnum Photos developed and
influenced Hartmann’s style and working method but
he developed a more personalized approach. While
from 1955 to 1961 his main assignments were photo-
essays for top magazines, he turned to corporate and
institutional projects that showed a uniquely human
face in science and industry. The documentation of
satellite production done for the European Space
Agency and many other‘‘high technology stories’’he
has told reveal his ‘‘precision’’ of composition and
concern for documentary authenticity. His fascination
with how technology embodies also the beautiful led
him to intimate portraits of precision-manufactured
components. ‘‘It was a certain kind of view, that was
no longer dependent on posing everything. And I came
upon this from being interested in presenting objects in
a way they hadn’t been looked at before.’’
As a working photographer Hartmann explored
varied themes in numerous countries, later exhibit-
ing social aspects of what he found there. For exam-
ple, his ‘‘Mannequin Factory’’ exhibition came
from an assignment—some of the images evoking
a metaphor for the dehumanizing horrors of our
time. And his last major projects provide a glimpse
of the photographer’s personal philosophy.
From 1969 onwards Hartmann lectured students
at different institutions in the United States, includ-
ing lectures at the University of Syracuse and New
York University and in Europe. He had a deep
commitment and sense of responsibility to help
develop young photographers and always had an
intern working with him. Hartmann’s longtime
association with Magnum provided mutual sup-
port from colleagues such as Elliott Erwitt, Eve
Arnold, and Inge Morath, who was a strong sup-
porter of his later project, ‘‘In the Camps.’’
While ‘‘In the Camps’’ deviates from his usual
subject matter, it maintains Hartmann’s ability to
allow the objects to speak for themselves. In the
haunting images of Nazi concentration camps as
they were in 1995, even devoid of people, the
camps speak loudly of the horrors they contained.
Hartmann photographed these places as an indebt-
edness to escaping them and ‘‘to fulfill a duty that I
could not define and to pay a belated tribute with
the tools of my profession.’’ With ‘‘In the Camps’’
the feeling from these penetrating images and the
essence of its meaning evokes the human tragedyHARTMANN, ERICH