Written By: Liz Ronk
If one had to choose a single photographer whose work would serve as a visual biography of New York City in its postwar Golden Age when Gotham became, in a sense, the capital of the world, the name Andreas Feininger would have to be in the mix. Paris-born, raised in Germany and, for a time, a cabinet-maker and architect trained in the Bauhaus, Feininger&#;s pictures of New York in the s and &#;50s helped define, for all time, not merely how a great 20th century city looked, but how it imagined itself and its place in the world. With its traffic-jammed streets, gritty waterfronts, iconic bridges and inimitable skyline, the city assumed the character of a vast, vibrant landscape.
Individual New Yorkers, meanwhile, were often an afterthought: it was form, pattern and, perhaps above all else, scale that Feininger sought. Human beings might have built this thrilling, sprawling, purposeful urban panorama, but their presence in Feininger&#;s pictures was not necessary; their handiwork would suffice. (In fact, in his single most famous portrait of a person, his photo of the young photographer Dennis Stock, Feininger obscures or, more accurately, replaces the human
Andreas Feininger
Feininger ( - ) combined an architect's love of precision, space, and technique with an artist's love of sweeping vistas. Although an American citizen, Feininger did not come to the United States until he was Son of the late acclaimed artist Lyonel Feininger, he was born in Paris in , and graduated with highest honors in architecture from schools in Germany. At the time, Feininger was using a camera as a reference aid in creating his building designs. The camera became his mechanical sketchbook.
Commissions were scarce for non-European citizens in the depressed economy. After a year's work in France for the legendary architect Le Corbusier, followed by a struggle to find employment in Stockholm, Feininger turned his attention full-time to photography. He sold his first photos in , moved with his family to the United States in , and in became a staff photographer for LIFE magazine where he completed more than assignments in a twenty year span.
Full of towering skyscrapers, broad swaths of road, and angles of geometric perfection, Feininger's works are masterful in their technical excellence and panoramic grandeur. Such timeless images as New York Landscape
Andreas Feininger looking at negatives with a magnifying glass.
(Photo by Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)
Andreas Feininger (American, ), the son of painter Lyonel Feininger, was born in Paris, and studied in Germany at the Weimar Bauhaus where he trained as an architect and photographer. He worked in Paris with Le Corbusier for one year. In , circumstances surrounding the onset of WWII forced him to move to New York City where he joined the Black Star Agency as a freelance photographer. Feininger’s interest in the wonders of the industrial age of the s, and in the structure and clarity of objects and machines, directed his focus away from people as subject matter, in his preferred medium of the pure black and white image. Feininger was a LIFE staff photographer with over assignments from He received numerous awards for his photographs and wrote many books on the technical aspects of shooting distinctly unique neighborhoods of New York City, abstract patterns of architecture and construction, and wonders of the natural world.
His work illustrated here, 76th Street Beach with the Illinois Steel Company in the background,
Andreas Feininger
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Andreas Feininger, the son of the painter Lyonel Feininger, was born on December 27, in Paris. He went on to study cabinetmaking and architecture at the Bauhaus in Germany. In he gave up architecture and moved to Sweden where he studied photography. In order to escape WWII, Feininger moved to the U.S in , and went on to join LIFE magazine in , where he completed more than assignments in a twenty-year span.
Feininger is best known for his skillful use of the telephoto lenses, which allowed to him to capture reality without distortion. Composition was extremely important to Feininger. Focusing on scale, perspective, light and pattern, Feininger created dramatic works. Some of his most acknowledged include the photojournalist and scenes of everyday New York activity.
Feininger has published several textbooks and picture books on photography that are now translated into several languages. Feininger's photographs are in many important collections including: The Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Victoria and Albert Museum of A
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