Erich Hartmann (photographer) - Early Photographic Work

Early Photographic Work

The only English speaker in the family, Erich Hartmann worked in a textile mill, in Albany, New York, attending evening high school and later taking night courses at Siena College where he earned his bachelor's degree. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered the war, and Erich enlisted in the US Army. Trained in Virginia and Ohio, he had to wait until 1943 before serving in England, Belgium and France (the Normandy Landings), and with the liberating forces as a court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne, Germany. At the end of the war he moved to New York City where, in 1946, he married Ruth Bains; they had two children, Nicholas (born in 1952) and Celia (born in 1956). During these years, he worked as an assistant to a portrait photographer and then as a freelancer. He studied at the New School for Social Research with Charles Leirens, Berenice Abbott and Alexey Brodovitch. His portrait subjects over the years included architect Walter Gropius, writers Arthur Koestler and Rachel Carson, musicians Leonard Bernstein and Gidon Kremer, actor Marcel Marceau, and many others. Music played a great role in his life and work: "Music captured me before photography did, he recalled. "In my parents' house there was not much music except for a hand-cranked gramophone on which I surreptitiously and repeatedly played a record of arias from "Carmen". This was before I could read!"

In the 1950s Hartmann first became known to the wider public for his poetic approach to science, industry and architecture in a series of photo essays for Fortune magazine, beginning with The Deep North, The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway and Shapes of Sound. He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American Geo and other magazines. Throughout his life he traveled widely on assignments for the major magazines of the US, Europe and Japan and for many corporations such as IBM, Nippon Airways, Citroën, Citibank, Boeing, Ford, Schlumberger for which he mainly used color. Invited in 1952 to join Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, he served on the Board of Directors from 1967 to 1986, and as President in 1985-1986.