December 19, 1999
Like all good photojournalists, Fred Stein (1909-1967) had an eye for intriguing detail and a knack for capturing the revealing moment. But more important, he combined a documentarian’s acumen with an artist’s visual sensibility. This selection of his vintage prints concentrates on the 1930’s, when he began using a hand-held Leica to record the street life of Paris, and the 1940’s in New York, where he settled during World War II.
Read MoreNovember 29, 1998
When the Dresden-born photographer Fred Stein (1909-1967) bought his Leica in 1933, he saw the potential for the new, hand-held equipment to facilitate the recording of momentary effects. The purchase coincided with his move to Paris, where, until his departure for New York in 1941, he concentrated on the serendipitous discoveries of the street that seem so memorable.
Read More1998
In 1946, photographer Fred Stein had an opportunity to meet with Albert Einstein, and was allotted 10 minutes to capture the notable physicist on film. However, the minutes turned into two hours as the men discussed art, politics, religion and other issues of the day. Because he was engaged in conversation – and not posed - Einstein’s thoughtfulness is revealed in the resulting images, giving us a glimpse of the great mind at work.
Read MoreApril, 1998
“He died too young, too early. If he had lived another 20 years, he would now be more recognized.” Peter Stein is talking about his father, Fred, whose documentary photographs captured poignant moments in the street life of two of the world’s great cities, and whose portraits sought to reveal the personalities of a number of the artists, writers and politicians of his time.
Read MoreApril, 1997
Among the images that will live forever in the collective consciousness of the Western world are the insightful portraits by Fred Stein. Dedicated as much to humanity as he was to the camera, Stein's mission as a photographer was to capture the souls of those he photographed. His subjects were the educated elite: scientists, artists, writers, architects, and politicians. They were also the man on the street: children, lovers, workers, hobos, and peddlers. He got to know his eminent subjects backward and forward. He read their bodies of work, and knew where they stood in the world, as well as the positions they held in their respective disciplines. When he wasn't photographing his more famous subjects, he was walking the city streets, recording life as it unfolded before him.
Read MoreSeptember 26, 1954
The report of a likeness and the revelation of character are the two principal goals of the portrait photographer, in the opinion of Fred Stein, whose one-man show of 126 portraits of outstanding personalities, “Creative Minds,” is currently on view at the Hudson Park Branch of the New York Public Library, 10 Seventh Avenue South, where it will hang through October. The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays.
Read MoreFebruary, 1952
Fred Stein has recorded the public face of the men of the Thirties and the cities where they once gathered to talk through the night. That age is over. Our decade is not a time of gatherings, conventions, congregations of all parties. As a very young man, Stein roamed all those camping grounds of the European intelligentsia. Rollei or Leica in hands, he shot swiftly and efficiently under the lights of the dais and the stage, and in the street itself.
Read MoreJuly, 1944
The camera makes no distinction between famous people and a nobody, between a good friend and a complete stranger, when the shutter opens. But the man behind the camera is influenced by the great moment when he is eye to eye to the important person. Then, the atmosphere acts upon his behavior, forms the kind of conversation, and, consequently, determines the expressions of his subject, too. Sometimes, with celebrities, you are just a spectator of a performance that goes on without even noticing you. All the better!
Read MoreJune, 1936
Should portraitists attempt to educate the public? Should we give them the photographs they want or the photographs we want them to have? I have noticed that many people nowadays prefer enlargements of heads snapped by amateurs in a seaside or garden group. The general belief is that portraits taken under these conditions are thoroughly natural. They are but that is all.
Read MoreA contest in which photographs of still life become the subjects for stories is one of the interesting ideas which Stein, the Paris photographer, has been trying.
“As one walks along,” he explains, “one frequently sees old and discarded objects abandoned in the street. Frequently these can be used as subjects for interesting photographs in which the subject itself becomes unimportant and in which the composition, the play of light and shade become primeval.”
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