Feininger was the son of famous Bauhaus painter, Lyonel Feininger, and 
he took many of his father’s Bauhaus ideas into his work. Feininger gained 
his reputation as a LIFE magazine photographer from 1943 to 1962, but 
would also work on his own personal practice as well. In his work he 
wanted to understand natural phenomena and its connection to manmade 
things. Much of his work emphasizes design, construction, and the way that 
objects are organized. Through longer exposures and experiments with 
light, Feininger is able to explore movement within the two photographs 
exhibited. A connection between the dancers’ simple movements and 
geometry is quickly revealed in these works. In addition to photographs 
based on these connections, Feininger was also famous for photographs of 
cities, for which he built four customized telephoto lenses and three close-
up cameras. This allowed Feininger to have scenes without distortion and 
at scale.
–Double Play

ANDREAS FEININGER (b. 1906, Paris, France; d. 1999, New York, NY) The photographs in Body Maps by Feininger, who is known for his dynamic black-and-white cityscapes of Manhattan and for employing experimental custom lenses, builds on the Bauhaus legacy of using fundamental geometric forms to map the natural movement of the human body. Feininger was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine (1943–62), where he completed more than 430 assignments. Solo exhibitions of his photography have been held by the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2007); Institute für Kulturaustausch, Tübingen, BadenWürttemberg, Germany (1998); the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ (1981); Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, TX (1980); the International Center of Photography, New York, NY (1976); the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY (1972 and 1957); The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY (1968); and Landesbildstelle, Hamburg, Germany, and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (both 1963). Feininger studied architecture at the Bauhaus in Germany, where his father, the painter Lyonel Feininger, taught and initially used the camera as a reference aid in creating his building designs.
–Body Maps: Works from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections in Conversation with Past Exhibiting Artists