On the 100th anniversary of his birth, we pay tribute to Magnum photographer Erich Hartmann with a selection of his most iconic images.
Erich Hartmann, who would have been 100 years old July 29, 2022 – was a quintessentially 20th-century photographer, both in the story of how he came to be an image maker, and in his pioneering of emerging practices.
Born into a Jewish household in Munich in 1922, little more than a year before Adolf Hitler led the Beer Hall Putsch, he and his immediate family escaped to the US shortly before war broke out in Europe, only to return again five years later as an American soldier. He served in England, France and Belgium before enlisting as a court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne, then moved back to the US, settling in New York City. There, he married, had two children, and pursued his interest in photography, studying under Berenice Abbott and Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research, and later working as a freelancer, making his name with his work for Fortune magazine in the 1950s. He joined Magnum Photos in 1952
