Fred Stein & Erika Stone New York Vision 1940’s-50’s

Date: Thursday November 5 - 21, 2009
Opening Reception:  Thursday, November 5, 2009, 6-8PM
The Farmani Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Photo League photographers Fred Stein & Erika Stone. The exhibition features vintage and modern prints of their unique visions as German immigrants living in New York in the 1940s and 50’s.

Fred Stein (b. Dresden, Germany, 1909-1967) became active in the German socialist and anti-Nazi movements as a teenager. Inspired by socialism's moral imperative Stein obtained a law degree from Leipzig University, but was denied admission to the German bar by the Nazi government for "racial and political reasons." In 1933, Stein fled to Paris where he was surrounded by expatriate socialists, thinkers, and artists. In this fertile milieu Stein began taking photographs professionally.

When in 1939, Germany declared war on France, Stein was placed in an internment camp for enemy aliens near Paris. After escaping, he and his family boarded one of the last boats to leave France and landed in the U.S. in 1941, carrying among their few belongings his Leica and a selection of negatives.

In New York, Stein became a member of the Photo League. An astute social observer, he unobtrusively wandered the streets of New York, documenting life from Fifth Avenue to Harlem. In New York, Stein once again found himself surrounded by writers, artists, scientists, politicians, and philosophers.  As a result, his archive is filled with portraits from Paris and New York of such greats as Calder, Castro, Corbusier, Dali, de Kooning, Einstein, Ernst, O’Keefe, de Kooning, Miro, Sandburg, Updike and more. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian, ICP, CCP and more.