An introduction to the work of the celebrated fashion photographer.

An experimenter and innovator, Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) produced an extensive body of work including portraits and nudes, celebrity portraiture and advertising campaigns – but it is his fashion photography for which he is best known.

Having fled Paris during World War II, Blumenfeld forged a stellar path in New York, where he worked for Harper’s Bazaar, American Vogue, Helena Rubinstein, L'Oréal and Elizabeth Arden.

Discover Blumenfeld’s masterful work through sixty full-page reproductions in this title in the Photofile series. The curator Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais contributes an introduction.

About the Author:

Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais is curator of photography at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. In 1941, he left Europe for the United States, where five years later he became a citizen. During the forties and fifties, he was one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in the world. However, most people are not familiar with the artist’s early work: the often bitingly humorous Dada montages he produced between 1916 and 1933.

This book by Helen Adkins, a renowned expert on the Berlin Dada movement, is the first to provide an extensive study of these early works. Blumenfeld did not intend for them to be shown publicly - they were personal gifts to his friends and acquaintances or enclosed in love letters to his fiancée. The approximately one hundred works - including many that have not previously been published and which the author discovered in the artist’s family archives and in other public and private collections - will be examined within the context of Blumenfeld’s life, photographs, drawings, and literary works.