Erwin Blumenfeld (1897 – 1969) was a famous American photographer of German origin.In the 1930s, he published collages mocking Adolf Hitler. In 1936, he emigrated to Paris. With the German occupation, he was interned in a concentration camp in 1940 because he was Jewish. In 1941, he could escape to the USA.In the 1940s and 1950s he became famous for his fashion photography, working for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and also for artistic nude photography. In the 1960s, he worked on his autobiography which found no publisher because it was considered to be too ironic towards society, and was published only after his death.

Early in his career he was involved with the Berlin Dadaist group that was important as the First World War ground to an end. He worked in photography in Amsterdam and by the 1930‘s was gaining a reputation for his experimental nude studies. The work he is most highly praised for are his surreal images that were highly influenced by Dadaism and the Surrealist movement.

"Day and night I try, in my studio with its six two-thousand watt suns, balancing between the extremes of the impossible, to shake loose the real from the unreal, to give visions body, to penetrate into unknown transparencies."~ Blumenfeld