Fred Stein (b. 1909 in Dresden, Germany — d. 1967 in New York) has not received the attention he deserves. In his lifetime, he photographed the who’s who of the 20th century in his two adopted cities: Paris and New York. His lack of renown owes itself in part to his death before the surge of interest in photography in the 1970s.
For the past fifteen years, Peter Stein has worked to archive and promote his father’s work, now the subject of a retrospective at the Jewish Museum of Berlin, an architectural jewel designed by Daniel Libeskind.
Fred Stein’s father was a rabbi, a socialist activist and anti-fascist. Stein was finishing his law degree in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. His doctoral thesis was rejected, and he was banned from practicing law for racial and political reasons.
He left Nazi Germany for Paris with his young wife, Lilo, claiming it was their honeymoon. In their luggage was a recent wedding gift: a Leica camera. In Paris, Stein decided to turn his hobby into a profession, since practicing law in France would require him to earn another degree and be a resident for ten years.
When World War II broke out, Stein was labeled an “enemy alien” and held in camps between 1939 and 1941, until he was finally escaped south to unoccupied France.
A few months later, he and his family were able to take a boat from Marseille to the United States, thanks to the efforts of Varian Fry, an American journalist sent to France in 1940 by the Emergency Rescue Committee.
Once settled in New York, he continued taking pictures with both his Rolleiflex and Leica. He obtained American citizenship in 1952 and only occasionally returned to his country of birth after 1958.
The retrospective at the Jewish Museum of Berlin features 130 black-and-white photographs, including portraits and street scenes from both Paris and New York.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
Exhibition
« Fred Stein, Im Augenblick »
From November 22nd, 2013 to March 23rd, 2014
Jüdisches Museum Berlin
Lindenstraße 9-14
10969 Berlin
Germany
http://www.jmberlin.de
Book
« Fred Stein, PARIS NEW YORK »
Editor: Dawn Freer
Authors: Cilly Kugelmann, Gilles Mora, Rosemary Sullivan, Theresia Ziehe
Linen
hardcover with dust jacket, 24 x 31 cm, 200 pages, 128 duotone ills.
German/English
ISBN 978-3-86828-429-4
€ 49,90
Kehrer Verlag 2013
http://www.artbooksheidelberg.de
