Felix Man (né Hans Felix Sigismund Baumann) was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in 1893. Prior to leaving Nazi Germany in 1934 for political reasons, he had already established himself as a successful photojournalist. After settling in London, he took photographs for the Daily Mirror and magazines including Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput, and Picture Post.
Photographer Felix Man (né Hans Felix Sigismund Baumann) was born in Freiburg im Breisgau Germany in 1893. He first became interested in photography when, sitting for his school photograph as a young boy, the flash powder failed to ignite (Osman, 2004). He owned his first box camera from the age of 11 and to save pocket money, he learned to develop and print his own film. He also took up etching, drawing, and painting and, in 1912, began studying fine art and art history at the University of Munich. After his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he was drafted into the army but resumed his studies in 1918. In 1926, he moved to Berlin and worked as an illustrator for the daily BZ am Mittag, a newspaper owned by the prominent Jewish-owned publishing house Ullstein Verlag, which was published at midday, meaning that he was required to prepare illustrations overnight. Realising that he could earn more money as a photographer, Man gave up his career as an illustrator and began taking photographs for the Ullstein Verlag newspapers Tempo and Morgenpost. He received his break as a photographer in 1929 after meeting Simon Guttmann, head of the renowned photography and press agency Deutscher Photodienst (also known as Dephot), and adopted the professional name of Felix Man to avoid confusion with the photographer Hans Baumann. Man worked as a photographer and layout artist for Dephot and, between 1929 and 1933, produced over 100 photo essays for the popular Ullstein Verlag newspapers Münchner Illustrierte Presse and Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. In 1931, his most famous photo essay ‘A Day with Mussolini’ was printed in the Münchner Illustrierte Presse.
Man was working in Canada on a story for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung when, in 1933, Ullstein Verlag was taken over by the Nazis. Although not Jewish, he was ideologically opposed to National Socialism and, in May 1934, he left Germany and immigrated to England, where he settled in London. Although he was refused a work permit and required to leave the country every three months, he was allowed to carry out freelance work in England as long as he was not formally employed or paid a fixed salary. Fortuitously, Man had only been in London for a few days when he met Stefan Lorant, former editor of the Münchner Illustrierte Presse, who had also recently immigrated and had already founded the publication Weekly Illustrated. Lorant employed Man as a photographer and, by the time the first issue was published in July 1934, Man and Kurt Hutton (a fellow émigré photographer) were working tirelessly to build a stockpile of photo stories for future use (Chillingworth and Wilkinson, 2018). In autumn 1935, a friend arranged for Man to work as a photographer (initially on a trial period) for the Daily Mirror newspaper, where he was impressed to find that the paper’s staff were already using Leica and Contax cameras, which was unusual in Britain at this date. His photographs for the Daily Mirror were published under the pseudonym Lensman, as were those of his British colleague, Humphrey Spender. During this period, Man also worked as a freelance photographer for various film companies and fashion magazines, as well as for Lilliput and Picture Post (magazines founded by Lorant in 1937 and 1938 respectively). During the mass internement of so-called 'enemy aliens' in June 1940, he was interned on the Isle of Man. Upon release, he continued to work for Picture Post, except for a brief period when he left to learn the process of colour photography, and he mainly worked in colour on his return to the magazine in 1948. In the same year, he became a naturalised British citizen.
In the early 1950s Man left Picture Post and carried out several assignments in colour for the American magazines Life and Sports Illustrated. He also took portraits of Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, and other famous artists at work in their studios, and published them in 1954 in a book titled Eight European Artists. From the late 1940s onwards, Man gradually turned his attention away from photography and began to build what would become one of the world’s largest private collections of lithographs. He spent the last few decades of his life commissioning and publishing prints by contemporary artists as editor of Europaeische Graphik and publishing a number of books and articles on lithography. Felix Man died in Westminster Hospital, London, England in 1985. Examples of his photography can be found in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Tate in London.