Helmut Gernsheim

author

German^[1] b. 1 March 1913, Munich, Germany^[1,4] d. 20 July 1995, Lugano, Switzerland^[2,3] active 1937–1995

Helmut Gernsheim (1913–1995) was a pioneering German-born historian of photography, collector, curator, and author. Born in Munich to a family of historians, he studied art history before fleeing Nazi Germany for England in 1937. He initially worked as a commercial photographer and served in an architectural survey during World War II. Gernsheim is widely credited with establishing the history of photography as a legitimate field of academic study. In 1945, he began collecting works by historic photographers to preserve them from disappearing. His monumental work, 'The History of Photography' (first published in 1955), became the standard text on the subject for decades. He was the first historian inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame.^[1,5]

• history of photography
• collecting
• art history