Feininger’s focus in photography was to document formal qualities of natural objects to examine their construction and his photographs emphasise design, with their simple and organised composition. Feininger also became well known for his depictions of New York City, machines and sculpture.
Andreas Feininger Prints
Artist Biography
Andreas Feininger was born in Paris in 1906, the eldest son of the Expressionist painter, Lyonel Feininger. Growing up in Germany, Feininger went on to study design at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, famous for its innovative approach to design and artistic education, where his interest in photography developed through his studies of architecture. Upon graduating in 1925 Feininger worked as an architect in Germany for four years before the country’s political climate forced him to flee to Paris.
Arriving in Paris, Feininger found employment in the studio of renowned architect Le Corbusier, where he worked for a time before moving to Stockholm. Having emigrated to Sweden, Feininger founded his own photographic firm which specialized in architectural and industrial photography. While in Sweden Feininger developed his photographic practice, bringing together elements of design and architecture in his photography. At the outbreak of the Second World War Feininger moved to New York, working as a freelance photographer for the Black Star Agency before becoming a staff photographer at LIFE magazine in 1942. He constructed four customised telephoto lenses and three close-up cameras, which allowed him to represent landscapes and city scenes from a monumental perspective, and to show small subjects in startling sizes, revealing unique and inventive perspectives.
Throughout his career Feininger wrote prolifically on photographic technique, producing several books including, The Anatomy of Nature (1956) and The World through my Eyes: 30 Years of Photography (1963). Feininger received numerous awards throughout his career including the Robert Leavitt Award in 1966 and the Infinity Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography in 1991. His work is housed in the permanent collections of several museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
