Women leaning
out of Window
Fred Stein knew the
demands of the photojournalist’s art. “One moment is all you have,” he
wrote. And as this exhibition of vintage and modern prints of 1930s Paris
and 1940s New York vividly demonstrated, Stein had a rare ability
to capture that moment.
Driven out of his native Germany by the Nazis, Stein fled with his wife to
Paris, bringing a wedding present that would prove decisive: a 35mm Leica camera. Stein used
the new handheld technology to document life on the streets of Paris
in images brimming with detail, at once spontaneous and crisply composed.
In his bird’s-eye view of a Popular Front march, for example, the
raised arm of a worker watching from a rooftop echoes the gesture
of a fastidious waiter offering a glass of the a la mode St. Raphael
aperitif, depicted on a billboard across the street.
He expressed his warm regard for the people and landscape of his newly adopted city
by paying poetic homage to such now classic landmarks as the Empire State, Flatiron,
and RCA Buildings. He shot them from the perspective of a man on
the street, dwarfed by the sleek, towering forms. The sense of drama
in his human and architectural subjects, however, never feels forced.
Stein may have only had one moment, but he was always patient enough
to wait for it.
Ellen McBreen |
