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Among the most important innovators in twentieth-century photography, Helmar Lerski was born in Strasbourg as Israel Schmuklerski, the son of immigrants from Poland. He grew up in Zurich but in 1893 sailed to the United States, where he joined a German-speaking theater troupe (and changed his name). He did not take up photography until 1910, when he was thirty-nine. In 1915, he moved to Berlin, where he worked as a cameraman and a lighting technician on expressionist films. In the late 1920s he returned to portrait photography in the expressionist style, which he continued to pursue after settling in Tel Aviv in 1931. In 1948, he returned to Zurich.
