Erwin Blumenfeld is among the most influential and innovative figures in twentieth-century photography. An artist with a unique perception of art, fashion and advertising, characterized by continuous experimentation.
From fashion photography to advertising campaigns, from portraits of personalities, to propaganda posters, up to the experimental works that today have been recognized as significant and decisive for the development of contemporary photography.
If Erwin Blumenfeld's European biography is known – his Jewish origins, his stay in Amsterdam, his experience with the Parisian avant-gardes – little is known about his American period and his studio in New York. After escaping occupied France in 1941 and settling in New York, Blumenfeld immediately began working for Harper's Bazaar magazine and collaborated with Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland on fashion shoots.
It is precisely in this climate of economic growth and with a booming press, that Blumenfeld's creative, provocative and personal work flourishes. After only three years in the United States, he is already one of the most famous and highly paid photographers in the sector, as the New York Times defines him as "an exceptional guide to the photographic imagery".
Her 15-year partnership with Vogue and then-editor Alexander Liberman marked the high point of her career in America. She created over fifty covers for US Vogue including portraits of famous models and high society women of the time, Babe Paley, Dovima, Jean Patchett and Carmen Dell'Orefice. In the same years he worked regularly with other American magazines such as Life Magazine and Cosmopolitan (for which he portrayed Grace Kelly in 1955), he also created important advertising campaigns for some clients, including Dior, Elizabeth Arden, Max Factor, L'Oréal and Helena Rubenstein .
Deeply inventive, experimental and often in opposition to conventional codes, Blumenfeld develops a style of his own, using photomontage, solarization, color slides and a myriad of hybrid techniques.
From the very beginning Blumenfeld was greatly influenced by the idea of photography as an art. Wanting to be seen as an avant-garde artist rather than a fashion photographer, he introduces a "smuggling art" into commercial projects. Blumenfeld, in fact, often drew inspiration from the history of art, from his interest in graphics, and found a way to quote the great painters, for example by reinterpreting Vermeer's work The Girl with an Earring by pearl for US Vogue, or referring to Manet's work Bar des Folies Bergères for a service published in Harper's Bazaar in 1941.
The exhibition curated by Nadia Blumenfeld Charbit, François Cheval and Ute Eskildsen and originally conceived for the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, presents over a hundred prints perfectly restored in color, original magazines and some clippings from historical publications .
Erwin Blumenfeld was born in Berlin on January 26, 1897 into a middle-class family of Jewish origin. After his father's death, he began his apprenticeship in the clothing industry and then enlisted in the French army during the First World War.
In 1918 he moved to Holland, where he married Lena Citroen and in 1923 he opened a leather shop in Amsterdam, always continuing to cultivate the dream of becoming a painter. During the early 1935s he took part in the Dada movement, proclaiming himself the head of the Dutch Dadaist movement, under the pseudonym Jan Bloomfield. His first photographic experiments date back to the early thirties, when he began to portray customers in his shop and to exhibit his works at the Van Lier gallery in Amsterdam. In XNUMX, after the bankruptcy of his company, he left for Paris where he was introduced to the world of fashion photography and to Vogue magazine thanks to the photographer Cecil Beaton, a great admirer of his photographs.
During the Second World War, Blumenfeld was interned in French war camps, but in 1941 he managed to escape to the United States with his family via Marseilles. Arrived in New York, he starts working for Harper's Bazaar and after three years he collaborates as a freelancer for US Vogue and other fashion magazines. Within a few years he becomes one of the most famous fashion photographers in the United States.
He continued to work in fashion and advertising until the early 4s, after which he dedicated himself to writing his autobiography "Eye to I". She died in Rome on July 1969, XNUMX.
