Portraits with a Leica
Portraits with a Leica
March 22, 2021
Fred Stein: Klaus Mann, Paris, 1935 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive
Stein (1909–1967) was a pioneer of 35mm photography. This selection of around 160 portraits, press and street photographs, spanning from the 1930s to the 1960s, retraces his evolution from a talented, self-taught photographer to one of the most important chroniclers of German-speaking exiles and émigrés – including Hannah Arendt, Willy Brandt, Bertolt Brecht, Klaus Mann, and Anna Seghers.
The fact that Stein, too, had been forced to leave his home country created a palpable connection with those he photographed. Many of his portraits have become iconic fixtures in our collective consciousness – so much so, that they are almost synonymous with the people they portray.
LFI dedicated a Leica Classic portfolio to Fred Stein’s oeuvre in issue 2/2014, along with a book review in LFI 2/2019.
For further details visit Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin
Fred Stein: Klaus Mann, Paris, 1935 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive
Fred Stein: Alfred Kantorowicz, Paris, 1935 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive
Fred Stein: Cinzano, Paris, 1937 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive
Fred Stein: Arthur Koestler, looking over the galley proof of his book ‘Spanish Testament’, Paris 1937 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive
Fred Stein: On a stone bench on 5th Avenue New York, 1946 © Stanfordville, NY, Fred Stein Archive