ARTIST

Josef Breitenbach, Portrait of Bertolt Brecht
Portrait of Bertold Brecht

Josef Breitenbach (1896-1984) was a German photographer and member of the Surrealistic movement. Breitenbach opened his first photography studio in Munich in 1930, where he photographed prominent actors, performers, and political figures. After Emigrating to the United States in 1942, Breitenbach taught at Black Mountain College, and later the Cooper Union and the New School. He exhibited his photographs extensively in Europe in the 1930s, and in the United States from the 1940s to the mid-1960s. Among many other exhibitions, Breitenbach’s work was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark 1955 exhibition, “The Family of Man,” curated by Edward Steichen.