{{Short description|Polish-American photographer (1924–2016)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2025}} {{Infobox person |nickname= |image=Bernard Gotfryd.jpg |caption= Gotfryd in 1970 |birth_date= {{birth-date|May 25, 1924}} |birth_place= [[Radom]], [[Second Polish Republic|Poland]] |death_date= {{death date and age|2016|6|3|1924|5|25|mf=yes}} |death_place= [[New York City]], U.S. |spouse= |children= |occupation= Photographer |awards= }} '''Bernard Gotfryd''' (May 25, 1924 – June 3, 2016) was a Polish-born American photographer, primarily associated with ''[[Newsweek]]'', for which he photographed celebrities, politicians, artists, and writers.
== Early life == Born into a Jewish family in [[Radom]], Gotfryd was 15 at the time of the German [[invasion of Poland]] in 1939. He watched his mother taken away, eventually to die in a concentration camp, and his grandmother's remains roll past in a pile of Jewish bodies on a cart.<ref name="Clavin">{{cite news |last1=Clavin |first1=Thomas |title=A Photographer Writes on the Holocaust |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/nyregion/a-photographer-writes-on-the-holocaust.html |work=The New York Times |date=August 19, 1990}}</ref> He spent most of the war working at a photo laboratory that developed pictures taken by German officers, some of which he smuggled to members of the [[Polish resistance movement in World War II|Polish resistance]].<ref name="Tucker">{{cite web |last1=Tucker |first1=Neely |title=Free to Use and Reuse: The Photographs of Bernard Gotfryd {{!}} Timeless |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2021/06/free-to-use-and-reuse-the-photographs-of-bernard-gotfryd/ |website=The Library of Congress |date=June 16, 2021}}</ref> He was eventually captured, and spent the final period of the war as a slave laborer in the quarries of the [[Gusen concentration camp]] at [[Mauthausen concentration camp|Mauthausen]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gotfryd |first1=Bernard |title=My Salzburg Journey |journal=The Bulletin of the Center for Holocaust Studies |date=2000 |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=1–2 |url=https://www.uvm.edu/sites/default/files/media/Spring2000.pdf}}</ref> He reunited with his brother, whom he initially failed to recognize, and sister after the war.<ref>{{cite book |title=Images from the Holocaust: a literature anthology |date=1997 |publisher=NTC Pub. Group |location=Lincolnwood, Ill |isbn=0-8442-5920-9 |pages=403–409}}</ref> Several years later, in 1947, he emigrated to the United States, where he married a fellow survivor from Radom, in March 1952.<ref name="Clavin" /> He was drafted into the [[United States Army Signal Corps]] in 1949, where he was trained as a [[combat photographer]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Gotfryd (Bernard) papers |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8q2nf3rc/entire_text/ |website=oac.cdlib.org}}</ref>
== Career == Following his army service, Gotfryd was hired as a photographer by ''[[Newsweek]]''.<ref name="Tucker" /> Though many of his assignments consisted of photographing movie stars and newsmakers wherever he could find them, his distinctive perspective was more apparent when he had more time. Assigned to photograph the controversial novelist [[William Styron]], as Styron's daughter [[Alexandra Styron|Alexandra]] later remembered, Gotfryd went beyond the assignment to capture the "cultural dissonance" of family life at Styron's home with "subtle candor."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Styron |first1=Alexandra |title=Opinion {{!}} Thoughts on Fathers and Families |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/thoughts-on-fathers-and-families.html |work=The New York Times |date=June 16, 2012}}</ref> In some cases he developed personal relationships with his famous subjects. Sent by ''Newsweek'' to shoot [[Nina Simone]], he eventually became a close friend; Simone introduced him to [[James Baldwin]] as "the best photographer in the world."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cohodas |first1=Nadine |title=Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone |date=2010 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-7243-7 |pages=154–155 |doi=10.5149/9780807882740_cohodas.16 |jstor=10.5149/9780807882740_cohodas.16 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807882740_cohodas.16}}</ref> A print of Gotfryd's photograph of Simone and Baldwin is now housed at the [[Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Photograph of Nina Simone with James Baldwin |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2011.132.5.5 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref>
== Late writing == Inspired by a 1983 visit to Poland, his first since his emigration, and his mother's exhortation the last day he saw her to "tell the world what the Nazis were doing," Gotfryd began writing brief stories of his memories of his childhood and [[the Holocaust]].<ref name="Clavin" /> These stories were eventually published as ''Anton, the Dove-Fancier: And Other Tales of the Holocaust'' in 1990.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gotfryd |first1=Bernard |title=Anton, the Dove Fancier: And Other Tales of the Holocaust |date=1990 |publisher=Washington Square Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-671-69137-0}}</ref> A selection of his photographs, with the title ''The Intimate Eye'', was published in 2006.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gotfryd |first1=Bernard |title=The Intimate Eye |date=2006 |publisher=Riverside Book Company |location=New York |isbn=978-1-878351-63-0}}</ref> Upon his death, his photographs, which he willed to the public, were donated to the [[Library of Congress]].<ref name="Tucker" />
== Gallery== <gallery mode="packed" heights="160"> File:David Ben-Gurion, half-length portrait, seated-ppmsca-12400-12432u.tif|[[David Ben-Gurion]] File:Kurt Vonnegut by Bernard Gotfryd (1965).jpg|[[Kurt Vonnegut]] File:Salvador Dali, gtfy.01021.jpg|[[Salvador Dalí]] File:Lauren Bacall by Bernard Gotfryd.jpg|[[Lauren Bacall]] File:Steve Jobs and Macintosh computer, January 1984, by Bernard Gotfryd.tif|[[Steve Jobs]] File:Catherine Deneuve, actress, gtfy.01130.tif|[[Catherine Deneuve]] File:Jimmy Carter Portrait by Bernard Gotfryd.jpg|[[Jimmy Carter]] </gallery>
== References == {{reflist}}
==External links== *{{Commons category-inline|Photographs by Bernard Gotfryd}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gotfryd, Bernard}} [[Category:1924 births]] [[Category:2016 deaths]] [[Category:Photographers from New York City]] [[Category:Polish photojournalists]] [[Category:People from Radom]] [[Category:Polish Holocaust survivors]] [[Category:United States Army Signal Corps personnel]] [[Category:Polish emigrants to the United States]] [[Category:American photojournalists]] [[Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent]] [[Category:Mauthausen concentration camp survivors]] [[Category:20th-century Polish photographers]] [[Category:21st-century Polish photographers]] [[Category:Newsweek people]]