Feininger,Andreas b. December 27, 1906; Paris, France d. February 18, 1999; New York, New York
Pioneer of photojournalism who became famous for his black-and-white photos of American metropolises such as New York City and Chicago.
Feininger was the oldest of the three sons of the American painter Lyonel Feininger and his wife Julia Lilienfeldt.
Two years after his birth, the family moved to Berlin-Zehlendorf. In 1919 a position was offered to Feininger’s father at the newly founded Bauhaus School in Weimar, which became the new home of the family for almost a decade. Weimar had a seminal influence on the younger Feininger. There he developed his love for nature and freedom and a dislike for compulsion and authority. As a sixteen-year-old he left grammar school and registered as a student at the Bauhaus, where he received his certificate as a cabinetmaker in 1925. Afterward he took up his studies in architecture at the Bauhaus, which had by then moved to Dessau. Here his interest in photography was awakened and his talent discovered. In 1929 Feininger graduated summa cum laude from his studies in architecture. Being an American and a Jew, it was not easy for him to find a job in Germany during the Great Depression. For a short time he worked in Dessau and later in Hamburg. In 1931 he ran out of work and traveled in his Opel sports car through Europe, taking pictures. With the help of a friend of his father, he finally found work in Paris. After it became impossible for him to continue his work in France, he settled in Stockholm, Sweden, for some years, where he held a position as architectural photographer. There he married the Swede Wysse Hagg on August 30, 1933. In September 1935 their son was born. Once again, the political situation forced him to leave the country. Finally, in 1939, at the age of thirty-three, Feininger and his young family emigrated to New York, where his parents had already settled two years before.In the United States Feininger was lucky: regardless of his inability to speak English, and despite his old-fashioned photo equipment, he was hired by the Black Star Picture Agency as an all-round photographer for a guaranteed $20 a week.
His pictures were sold to newspapers and magazines. This job enabled him to take pictures of anything he was interested in and to get to know New York City. After one year Feininger left the agency and accepted an offer to work as a freelance photographer for Life magazine. In January 1943 he became editorial photographer of the magazine, a position he held for almost two decades, until 1962. In that position, he had the opportunity to use the latest equipment and take advantage of the magazine’s laboratory, with its specially trained experts. Andreas Feininger produced almost 400 stories for Life magazine.After Feininger left Life magazine, he worked on his own, publishing several books and teaching at New York University in 1972. By the year of his death Feininger had published more than fifty books, many of which had been translated into other languages. He had received a great number of prizes and awards for his photography. His pictures have been and are still presented in uncountable solo and group exhibitions in many famous museums and public collections in the United States and Europe and are familiar to a large audience from motifs on posters, postcards, and calendars.
Annette Hofmann
See also Bauhaus; Photography
References and Further Reading
Buchsteiner, Thomas, and Otto Letze, eds.
Andreas Feininger: That’s Photography. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, Hatje Verlag, 2004.