Born in Dresden, Germany in 1909, Fred Stein was a brilliant law student and fervent anti-Nazi activist. He was forced to flee to Paris in 1933. Living among a circle of expatriate artists and intellectuals, Stein took up photography. He was a pioneer of the small, hand-held camera - the Leica. Its mobility allowed him to range through the streets documenting Parisian life with ease and naturalness. This new approach also enabled him to make strikingly intimate portraits of the people who shaped the intellectual life of Europe in the 1930's.
When war was declared, Stein was put in an internment camp for enemy aliens. He managed to escape as the Nazis were entering Paris, and after a harrowing journey, was reunited with his wife and infant daughter in Marseilles, where the three boarded the S.S. Winnipeg, one of the last boats to leave France.
New York in the 1940's gave him access to the great artists and thinkers who shape our age such as Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marc Chagall, and Carl Sandburg. He photographed more than 1200 personalities in addition to capturing the freedom and diversity of New York from Fifth Avenue to Harlem. Photographs by Fred Stein are in the Collections of the National Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography, The National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian), the Muse Carnavalet (Paris), as well as corporate collections around the world.
These limited edition, museum quality, modern prints are made from the original negatives. They are numbered, bear the estate stamp and are signed by the artist's son.
