Eye to I: The Autobiography of a Photographer

Description

The life of Erwin Blumenfeld, one of the century’s best known photographers, was a tumultuous one. By turns acerbic, self-mocking, playful, even absurd, this autobiography deals with all Blumenfeld’s subjects – his Jewish family, the Germans, the Vichy French, his models and New York publishers – with equal measures of wit, mockery and irony. He spares himself least of all.

Born in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Blumenfeld was drafted in to serve in World War I, first as an ambulance driver (although he couldn’t drive) and then as book-keeper at a field brothel, and was awarded the Iron Cross for giving his sergeant French lessons. Between the wars he was part of an avant-garde circle that included such artists as Else Lasker-Schuler and George Grosz and members of the Dada movement. During World War II, Blumenfeld was interned in a series of French camps, but eventually arrived in New York, where he found work with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, producing some of their most memorable covers and becoming fashion’s highest-paid photographer.