Andreas Feininger

Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) was born into the nascent photo-print culture of the early twentieth century, and joined a generation of modernist photographers emerging between the wars, who pioneered and established the dramatic visual vocabulary of cityscapes in twentieth-century photography. Feininger also extended the realm of still-life photography, making exquisitely detailed photographs of insects, flowers and shells, eliciting sculptural character from natural forms. Born in Paris and raised in Germany, Feininger was the eldest son of artist Lyonel Feininger. Beginning with his childhood, the book follows the young Feininger through his period at the Bauhaus in Weimar to his time as an émigré in Paris and Stockholm to his later years in the United States, where he built his formidable career as a photojournalist and photographer, working as a photo editor for Life magazine and becoming famed for his crisp and energetic photographs of the streets and buildings of Manhattan. Now, for the first time, Thomas Buchsteiner's biography tells the story of the artist behind and beyond the camera.

“The camera is superior to the eye, and the photograph can, and ideally should, portray the world more graphic than reality itself.” --Andreas Feininger
The basic principles underlying the photographic art of Andreas Feininger are clarity, simplicity and organization. The eldest son of painter Lyonel Feininger, he was born in Paris in 1906. Upon completion of training as a cabinet-maker at the Bauhaus in Weimar in the early 1920s, he went on to study architecture in the state schools of Weimar and Zerbst. It was while working as an architectural photographer in Stockholm that he developed the sweeping vistas and fine balance for which his pictures were famous. Emigrating to New York following the outbreak of World War II, Feininger was hired as a photo-editor by Life magazine. In his own work, he captured images of urban canyons, skyscrapers, bridges and elevated railways in concentrated, atmospheric photographs that are regarded as classical works today. He applied the same enthusiasm to nature studies: his detail images of insects, flowers, shells, wood and stones imbue these forms with a sculptural character. That's Photography presents the work of this classic photographer, who died in 1999.