Felix H. Man

Life Man was born in Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany. After finishing school in Freiburg im Breisgau, from 1912 he studied art and art history in Munich and Berlin. His studies were interrupted by the First World War. He took part in WWI as an officer and began to take photographs at the front. Here he undertook his first reporting for Ruhe an der Westfront. In 1918 at the end of WWI, he resumed his studies in Munich and continued in Berlin.

In Berlin in 1927, Man started work as an illustrator and graphic designer for the BZ newspaper and for Tempo.

Man toured North Africa, Canada, and the Canadian Arctic, from where he delivered his photo reports for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. In 1933, he returned to Berlin and received no work permit because he refused to enter the Reichspressekammer and so he emigrated to England in May 1934. His 41 picture reports, produced between 1929 and 1935 in Canada, continued to be published in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung.

After his emigration in 1934, he met Stefan Lorant in London, where he was editor of the refounded Weekly Illustrated and within six months published 47 image reports. He then moved to the Daily Mirror, where he remained until 1938, to then work under the direction of Stefan Lorant as a chief photographer at Picture Post, The gallery also holds a photograph of Man himself by Roger George Clark, daing from 1983. The lights go up in London, a 1945 photograph by Man, is held in the Tate collection.

He died in 1985 in London.

Publications 150 years of artists' lithographs 1803–1953. London: Heinemann, 1953. Eight European Artists. London: Heinemann, 1954. Artists' lithographs: a world history from Senefelder to the present day. London: Studio Vista, 1970. Felix H. Man – Photographien aus 70 Jahren. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1983.

Honours Culture Award of the German Society for Photography (1965) Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz – Great Federal Cross of Merit (1982)

The Felix H. Man Memorial Prize is open to photographers under the age of 30.