Son œuvre raconte le
parcours d’une vie ballotée par l’Histoire, documente une époque et des lieux
mais révèle surtout la profondeur et le talent d’un immense auteur quasiment
inconnu jusqu’à ce jour.
Fred Stein’s photographs
reflect a world seen with poignant clarity. Born in Dresden, Germany in 1909,
he became a brilliant law student and fervent anti-Nazi activist. He was forced
to flee to Paris in 1933. Living among a circle of expatriate artists and
intellectuals, Stein became a photographer. He was a pioneer of the small
hand-held camera – the Leica. Its mobility allowed him to range through the streets
documenting the life he saw there with ease and naturalness. This new approach
also enabled him to make strikingly intimate portraits of the people who shaped
the intellectual life of Europe in the 1930’s.
When war was declared,
Stein was put in an internment camp for enemy aliens. He managed to escape as
the Nazis were entering Paris, and after a harrowing journey, was reunited with
his wife and infant daughter in Marseilles, where the three boarded the S.S.
Winnipeg, one of the last boats to leave France.
New York in the 1940’s gave
him access to the great artists and thinkers who shaped our age; and the
freedom and diversity of the New World inspired his reportage as he ranged from
Fifth Avenue to Harlem. The historical importance of his work is elevated by
the beauty of his art.
“I first met Fred when we
were both refugees fighting the totalitarian Nazi regime through the rather
poor means we had. In his time he was very much in the avant-garde, a brilliant
photographer inspired by his quest for justice and his concern for truth so
clearly reflected in his photographs. He truly was a man of vision, and his
choice of people and subjects is an obvious proof of it.”
-Willy Brandt, Chancellor of Germany
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