Josef Breitenbach (1896–1984)

Josef Breitenbach was born to a Jewish family of wine merchants in Munich. He attended technical high school and trained as a salesman for an instrument firm and later as a bookkeeper for an insurance firm. In 1914, he began studying philosophy and art history at Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, and after graduating, worked for the Social Democratic Party. In 1918, he took part in the coup that established the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. In 1932, after several unhappy and unsuccessful years managing the family business, Breitenbach turned to his hobby of photography and opened his own professional portrait studio. His clients were prominent members of Munich's bohemian world, including artists, writers, and actors. However, his political past and the anti-Nazi activity of his teenage son Hans made them both targets for the SA. After a group of these storm troopers confronted Breitenbach at his studio in 1934, he and Hans fled to Paris. There he exhibited his work in solo shows and also alongside leading Surrealist photographers such as Man Ray, Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Eli Lotar, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Roger Parry, introducing experimental images and incorporating inventive and avant-garde techniques. He was one of the rare artists of the period to produce color photos. Breitenbach also was active in the German expatriate community, and contributed his work to the 1938 exhibition called Five Years of Hitler Dictatorship to help alert the world to the threat of Nazism. After Nazi Germany invaded France in World War II, Breitenbach escaped from internment in a refugee work camp with the help of friends in England and fled to the USA in 1941. Settling in New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life, Beitenbach established a successful commercial and magazine freelance career. He responded to the electric beat of the city, composing photos such as "Radio City" (1942) that had a jazz-like quality. He exhibited his work widely in Europe and the USA over the next two decades, including shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He taught at Cooper Union from 1946 to 1966, and at The New School for Social Research from 1949 to 1975. In 1952-1953, he did photojournalism in Asia for the United Nations Reconstruction Agency. His many published works included Women of Asia (1968) and Seven Portraits (1976). His work was selected by Edward Steichen for inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art's now-famous international traveling exhibit "The Family of Man."