Jessica's Blog

 

On July 4, 1969, in searing heat, the celebrated fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld ran up and down the Spanish Steps in Rome in a successful bid—so his family believes—to kill himself. The 71-year-old had not taken his heart medication, and he suffered a heart attack. He thought he had prostate problems, possibly cancer. By this time Blumenfeld’s career was also in free fall—astonishing, because during the 1940s and ‘50s he was one of the most celebrated and highly paid fashion photographers in the world, creating magazine covers and spreads that were works of art.

 

In his long career, Blumenfeld photographed celebrities including Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, the painter Henri Matisse, Bette Davis, the singer Josephine Baker, and Lucille Ball.

 

The excellent Ovation documentary, The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, produced by his grandson Remy Blumenfeld, reveals the colorful swathe of Blumenfeld’s life, from growing up in Germany before the First World War, and his early, wildly creative collages that combined text and images, revealing the aesthetic direction his photography would later take.

 

One of my favorite early stories sees Blumenfeld share a public convenience stall with the Dada-ist George Grosz, who fixed a monocle in his eye and apparently pissed the outline of Blumenfeld’s profile on to the pissoir’s wall.

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Blumenfeld’s images were never conventional: models’ heads were replicated, frames were split, mirroring devices were used, some features were accentuated over others. There was an element of the surreal to his portraits, and what’s really noticeable is how the glossy magazines of the day—principally Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar—embraced his work: today it would seem commercially self-sabotaging to feature the complex images he produced. No Kardashian coverlines, no hard sell on the clothes; the beautifully composed image was everything.

 

The documentary demonstrates how his most famous work have been imitated by fashion photographers ever since: the model Lisa Fonssagrives, holding on to the Eiffel Tower, for example, or the model Lisa Patchett’s face reduced to an eyebrow, shadows, and pair of lips for a 1950 Vogue cover. While convinced he himself was ugly, Blumenfeld was entranced, and inspired, by beautiful women—and his photographs capture the lines and shadows of their bodies sensually.

 

When Blumenfeld was seemingly at his creative zenith, the magazine world moved on—and the brasher, more commercialized landscape of the 1960s was not one that appreciated his more overt artistry. It must have demoralized, even devastated, him.

 

His partner at the time of his death, the woman he left his wife Lena for, was Marina Schinz, his assistant who was 44 years his junior.

 

After Blumenfeld died his family feuded over his treasure trove of pictures and negatives. This led to the photographer’s images being kept from public view until now. There have been recent high-profile exhibitions of his work in cities including London, Paris and Shanghai, his work has been selling for large sums of money, and the TV documentary has further reignited interest in his work, and its influence on fashion photographers today.

 

Blumenfeld’s grandson, the TV producer Remy Blumenfeld (founder of the Thinking Violets production company), made the Ovation documentary, and spoke to The Daily Beast about it, and the vivid and mysterious life of his grandfather.

 

Do you have memories of your grandfather? What were they? What was he like?

 

My first memory of my grandfather is when he came to visit us in Vienna and he brought me two love birds in a cage, which he called Remy and Remy. When you see these identical birds through his fascination with mirrors, the gift makes sense. I still have the beautiful Portuguese wire cage that the love birds came in. I remember my grandfather taking me in his arms and throwing me up in the air—up and down.

 

Later, in New York, my grandfather took me to my first movie. It was The Jungle Book. A young, pretty, boyish woman came with us, although my grandmother, with whom he lived until he died, was at home in their apartment. I later discovered that this woman was his last mistress. We left their apartment at 1 West 67th Street and walked to the movies at Columbus Circle.

 

How did he seem to you?

 

He was the most loving man. Very cuddly with me as a young boy. Very warm. Smiling.

 

Why did you want to make a documentary about your grandfather?

 

When I was a teenager, a producer at the BBC came to visit and asked if I would agree to play my grandfather as a young man in a documentary film about his life. They wanted me to walk around museums in Berlin, in my grandfather’s footsteps. In the end, it didn’t happen. The BBC film was never made. I suppose in the intervening years I always assumed someone else would make a film about him. Then I became a producer and made dozens of documentaries and reality TV series. I even made films about other artists, such as The Other Francis Bacon (Channel 4 1999). Still, no one else had produced a film about Erwin Blumenfeld. So I pitched the idea to Richard Klein at BBC4 and he said I should make it.

 

What did you know about his story?

 

I grew up in Cambridge, surrounded by his photographs and collages, which my father had inherited. Of course, I’d read his autobiography, Eye to I, when it came out in English.

 

I remember my father leaving our July 4th fireworks party to go to Rome where my grandfather died. But there were many questions, that as a child I didn’t understand. How exactly had my grandfather died? Why was he in Rome with his 27-year-old assistant? Why did my grandmother attend the funeral?

 

What was revealed to you about him by making the documentary?

 

Through making the film, I had to sit down with my father and my uncle, Erwin’s two sons, and ask them questions, as a film maker that as their son and nephew I couldn’t ask—about his private life. I had not known, for instance that although my grandmother Lena was the great love of his life, in later years he’d taken two mistresses and that the first of these, and the woman whom he adored above all others, was my aunt Kathleen. That he would have introduced his great love to his son in the hope that they would marry, was a surprise to me.

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