Artist: Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969)

Solarized Hands, Amsterdam, 1929. Heliogravure size 28x22cm, printed on high quality paper designed for the publication by Gruppo Editoriale Electra Milano 1980, limited edition, this print is numbered 42.

Erwin Blumenfeld (26 January 1897 – 4 July 1969) was an American photographer of German origin. He was born in Berlin and went to Amsterdam in 1918, where he came in contact with Paul Citroen (who he knew already from the Askanische Gymnasium in Berlin) and Georg Grosz. Together with Paul Citroen he founded the Commission for Dadaist Culture in Holland in 1920.

He married Lena Citroen (a niece of Paul Citroen) in 1921, with whom he had three children. In 1922 ha started a leather goods shop, which failed in 1935. He moved to Paris, where he set up as a photographer in 1936 and did free-lance work for the French edition of Vogue. After the outbreak of the Second World War he was, as a German citizen, placed in an internment camp. In 1941 he was able to emigrate to the United States, where he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer working as a free-lancer for Harper’s Bazar, Life and American Vogue. His personal photographic work showed the influence of Dadaism and Surrealism, his two main areas of interest were death and women. He was expert in laboratory work, and experimented with photographic techniques such as distortion, multiple exposure, photo-montage, and solarisation.

Blumenfeld died in Rome on July 4th, 1969.