Erwin Blumenfeld

Erwin Blumenfeld was one of the most successful American fashion photographers of the mid-twentieth century. His work appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Life magazines. Blumenfeld was born in Berlin and in 1925 settled in Holland, where he ran a leather-goods shop. He had been experimenting with photography and photomontage since the age of ten, and he moved to Paris in 1936 to fulfill his aspirations of becoming a professional photographer. There he met British photographer Cecil Beaton, who facilitated a yearlong contract with the French edition of Vogue. Blumenfeld’s career was interrupted for a year while he was imprisoned in various internment camps in France; he was released in 1941 and moved to New York. By the mid-1950s, he was the highest-paid fashion photographer in the world.