Milton Halberstadt had an illustrious career in fine art and commercial photography that spanned seven decades and left a body of work covering genres from abstract art to commercial photography.

Halberstadt studied at the Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

 and the New Bauhaus founded in 1937 by designer-painter Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...

 and the concepts from the original Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 in Germany. He served as an assistant to both Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes

György Kepes

György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...

.

He served as an Air Force navigator during World War II in the Air Force 456th Bomb Group. He was a navigator aboard a B-24 bomber flying over Yugoslavia in 1944 when his aircraft was hit by enemy fire. Despite severe injuries Halberstadt guided the plane down safely and he received the Distinguished Flying Cross medal for heroism in aerial combat.

M. Halberstadt Illustration studio in San Francisco was known for fine large format

Large format

Large format refers to any imaging format of 4×5 inches or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the 6×6 cm or 6×9 cm size of Hasselblad, Rollei, Kowa, Pentax etc cameras , and much larger than the 24×36 mm frame of 35 mm format.The main advantage...

 studio photography and he changed how food was photographed and used in print. Halberstadt was a colleague and contemporary of Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....

, Minor White

Minor White

Minor Martin White was an American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.White earned a degree in botany with a minor in English from the University of Minnesota in 1933. His first creative efforts were in poetry, as he took five years thereafter to complete a sequence of 100 sonnets while...

, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston

Edward Weston

Edward Henry Weston was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of...

 and other fine art photographers working in California in the area of Fine Art and Commercial Photography. He was a leader in San Francisco's golden age of advertising design. Clients included Del Monte, Dole, S&W, Paul Masson, Pan-Am Airliens and Royal Viking Lines.

Many of his students have gone on to illustrious careers in fine art photography, including his last assistant, Alan Ross, who went on to work with Ansel Adams before becoming a leader in Art Photography in his own right.

The Milton "Hal" Halberstadt Papers and Photograph Collection resides at UC Davis special collections archives.

Chronology

• 1919 Born
• 1936 Began professional photography career in Boston after high school. In his early work he documented the streets of his native Boston for the Works Progress Administration
  Works Progress Administration
  The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
  
   (WPA) National Research Project.

• 1940 Rockefeller foundation Scholarship to the School of Design, Chicago (New Bauhaus)
• 1943 Served as a navigator during World War II
• 1945-1973 M. Halberstadt Illustration Photography Studio in San Francisco
• 1973- Taught fine photography at University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University and the University of Oregon
• 2000 Died

Print References

• Warren, Lynne. Encyclopedia of Twentieth-century Photography CRC Press, 2006.
• Comer, Stephanie, et al. The Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts Chronicle Books, 2006.
• Editor. B&W Magazine Millenium Issue #5 B&W Magazine, February, 2000.
• Court, Arthur. Minerals; Nature's Fabulous Jewels, photography by Milton Halberstadt Abrams, 1974.
• Kepes, György. Language of Vison Credited as Halbe, Paul Theobald Company, 1961.
• Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo. Vision in Motion Credited as Halbe, Paul Theobald Company, 1947.
• The Editors of Time-Life Books,The Studio, Life Library of Photography, numerous printings.

Exhibitions

• CONTEMPORARY ART, Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas, 1948.
• PIONEER PHOTOGRAPHERS Addison Gallery of American Art
  Addison Gallery of American Art
  The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...
  
  , Andover, Massachusetts, 1948.
• SUBJEKTIVE FOTOGRAPHIE, 2nd International Exhibit of Modern Photography.
• State School of Arts & Crafts, Saarbrücken, Germany, 1954.
• FINE ARTS EXHIBIT IV, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1966.
• AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY:THE SIXTIES, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery,University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1968.
• AFFRISCHER FRAN CALIFORIEN GavIe Museum,Stockholm,Sweden, 1968.
• ART IN EMBASSIES, A Program of the United States Dept. of State.
• TEN CALIFORNIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS, 1973.
• PHOTOGRAPHY + THE CITY Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1965.
• Retrospective:PHOTOGRAPHS 1936-81, Douglas Elliott Galleries, San Francisco, 1981.
• Taken by Design: Photographs From the Institute of Design, 1937–1971, Art Institute of Chicago, 2002.
• A Mind at Play, Art Institute of Chicago, 2008.

Permanent Collections

• Addison Gallery of Americarn Art, Andover, Massachusetts.
• George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.
• Polaroid, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Smithsonian Institution
  Smithsonian Institution
  The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
  
  , Washington, D.C..
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• The Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, California.
• The Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.
• University of California at Davis, Special Collections, Halberstadt, Milton "Hal" (1919–2000) Papers and Photograph Collection

Film

• PHOTOGRAPHY - THE INCISIVE ART (Ansel Adams' series of 5 films for KQED) PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY with Ansel Adams, Beaumont Newhall and others, 1960.

External links

• Milton Halberstadt Manuscript and Photograph Collections, University of California, Davis
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Taken By Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971
• The Late, Great Light Show; Chicago's Photographers and Their Abstract World, New York Times, May 8, 2002
• A Mind at Play, Art Institute of Chicago
• Foundation for Photographic Preservation
• Ansel and Virginia Adams Collection
• Crews and Men of the 456th Bomber Group