Collaborators
Peter Stein, ASC - Producer, Director, Cinematographer
Peter Stein is a cinematographer and the son of Fred Stein. He has shot over fifty feature films, TV movies, and documentaries for the major Hollywood studios and TV networks. He was Professor of Cinematography in the New York University, Tisch Graduate Film Program for 13 years, where he was the Head of Production. He has been nominated for 2 Emmy Awards and is a member of the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers, ASC. He is now the full time director of the Fred Stein archive. Peter lives in Dutchess County, NY, with his wife Dawn Freer and two cats.
Dawn Freer - Writer, Director, Editor
Dawn Freer studied art and psychology, but gravitated to film after her education. She spent thirty years in the film business, working on feature films, TV movies, and television commercials in New York and Los Angeles – while raising two children.
As a film editor, she mainly works on independent documentaries with varying budgets, and has earned numerous awards. She also edits the written word, primarily literary fiction. She has written and published articles about Fred Stein in books and magazines.
Mark Waschke - Voice of Fred Stein
Mark Waschke is a popular German actor. After a successful theater career, he expanded to film in 2005. He has appeared in many films, and has won many prestigious awards for his acting. He is a thoughtful and socially-conscious actor, known for his sensitive portrayals of complex characters. He also plays a recurring role in Germany’s most successful TV series, Tatort. He often returns to his roots, performing on stage to recharge his artistic batteries.
Barbara Sukowa - Voice of Lilo Stein
Barbara Sukowa is a leading German actress who has won considerable critical acclaim throughout her career for her many notable roles. Her dedication and intensity of purpose illuminates all her work. . She is known for her connection with directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Margarethe von Trotta. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for the film Rosa Luxemburg (1986). Her other film appearances in the leading role include Lola (1981), Europa (1990), M. Butterfly (1993), and Hannah Arendt (2012). She has also pursued a career as a classical music narrator.
Dr. David M. Milch - Producer
Dr. David M. Milch is a Harvard-trained physician and venture capitalist who has invested in science and medical technology. He is a patron of the theater and is the president of a film production company, MiLa Media.
In 2010, Dr. Milch established The David M. Milch Foundation to serve “tikkun olam” (healing the world). The two major areas are: the use of arts for social impact; and youth mentorship. The foundation serves as seed philanthropy to initiate and shape strategies for artistic initiatives of importance. The foundation is also deeply involved in activities related to helping youth navigate through current social and economic challenges.
Irene Höfer - Executive Producer
Irene Höfer studied film and television at the Free University of Berlin and started her career in production for cinema and TV before establishing Medea Film in 1995. Under her new entity, she went on to become a creative producer and served as the co-writer on documentaries portraying Michael Ballhaus, Wim Wenders, Udo Jürgens, Sonia Rykiel, Udo Lindenberg and Franz Xaver Kroetz. She has been training emerging talent in the audio-visual sector since 2000 and became a member of the German Film Academy in 2018. In addition to remaining an independent producer, Irene is the managing director of Medea Film Factory where she continues to develop exciting narrative structures for documentaries and art house films as well as more innovative cross- media formats.
“He has recorded the central years of our century with a flood of pictorial impressions, and a multitude of faces famous and anonymous, which will illuminate the period forever…words often grope where pictures indelibly suggest or declare, especially when the gifted hand and eye of an artist are at work with the camera. Fred Stein was preeminently such an artist.”
— Herman Wouk, author
Curators
Cynthia Young
Cynthia Young is the curator of the Robert Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography in New York, a position she has held since 2000. In 2011 she curated the exhibition of the famous collection of negatives found in Mexico City almost seventy years after they went missing in France: The Mexican Suitcase: The Rediscovered Spanish Civil War Negatives of Capa, Chim, and Taro. She also authored the book accompanying the exhibition. She has published several books on Capa and other leading contemporary photographers, such as Capa in Color, Unknown Weegee and republished Robert Capa: Death in the Making.
She has also curated exhibitions at the Galerie National du Jeu de Paume in Paris and is on the board of governors of ALBA, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives; which promotes social activism and the defense of human rights.
Michaël Houlette
Michaël Houlette is the director of the museum the Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau in Gentilly, which is just outside Paris. The museum is dedicated to humanist photography, in honor of the French photographer whose name it bears. He was formerly a curator and coordinator of exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. He has written many books, among them Amélie Galup and Laure Albin Guillot.
He is the founder and director of the Lavoir Numérique, or the Digital Washhouse, an educational initiative set in the renovated washhouses of Gentilly. The Lavoir Numérique is an establishment dedicated to creating and disseminating audiovisual content, teaching audiences to “see” in photography.
Theresia Ziehe
Theresia Ziehe is a German curator. She is currently the curator of photography at the Jewish Museum Berlin, which is one of the largest and most important museums in Europe, designed by Daniel Libeskind. It performs a special function in German society by providing a way of remembering and integrating Germany’s difficult history.
Ziehe has curated many important shows at the JMB, including a retrospective of the photography of Fred Stein, Im Augenblick (In an Instant: Photographs by Fred Stein); Russians Jews Germans – Photographs by Michael Kerstgens from 1992 to the Present, Quota Refugees: Russian-Speaking Immigrants to Germany, and Frédéric Brenner - Zerheilt: Healed to Pieces.
Ziehe is one of the curators of the new permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Entitled Jewish History and the Present in Germany, it comprises thousands of square meters, illustrating how Jewish communities have lived in their environment and how they have shaped it.
Sarah Meister
Sarah Meister is a curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. She has organized a range of critically acclaimed exhibitions, publications, and programs and secured landmark acquisitions for the museum’s collection. She is a fellow at MoMA’s International Curatorial Institute and the Center for Curatorial Leadership, where she teaches the popular online course “Seeing Through Photographs” (offered on Coursera). She is also codirector of the August Sander Project, a research initiative co-hosted by MoMA and Columbia University. She is a recipient of the Lee Tenenbaum Award for outstanding research and scholarship.
She has published many books on photography, including Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother; Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957; Arbus Friedlander Winogrand, New Document, 1967; Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light, and One and One is Four: The Bauhaus Photocollages of Josef Albers.
Gilles Mora
Gilles Mora is a French photography curator and author specializing in 20th century American photography. He has written books and monographs on Walker Evans, Edward Weston, W. Eugene Smith, and Aaron Siskind, as well as photography surveys such as Photo SPEAK - A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography. Mora won the Prix Nadar in 2007 for the book La Photographie Américaine: 1958–1981: the Last Photographic Heroes. He has also published a book of his own photographs, Antebellum.
Mora was co-founder and editor in chief of the magazine Les Cahiers de la photographie until 1993, when he founded and was editor in chief for the journal L'Œuvre Photographique. In 1991, he was appointed to oversee the photography program at Éditions du Seuil, where he remained until 2007.
He was artistic director of the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival from 1999 to 2001, and since 2010 has been exhibition curator at the Pavilion Populaire photography museum in Montpellier, where he lives. In his spare time, he performs with his rockabilly band, the Frantic Rollers.
Brian Wallace
Brian Wallis is the Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York. He is also on the faculty of the ICP-Bard College Program in Advanced Photographic Studies.
Wallis is a curator, writer, and editor at the forefront of critical thinking about photography, particularly photojournalism.
Previously, Wallis had been on staff at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, all in New York.
Quentin Bajac
Quentin Bajac is a French curator and art historian specializing in the history of photography. He is the director of the photography collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Bajac has held positions at the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Musée Natiional d’Art Modern École du Louvre.
He has published a number of books, including La photographie, a three-volume series on the history of photography; Parr by Parr: Discussions with a Promiscuous Photographer; Stephen Shore: Solving Pictures; and Being Modern: MoMA in Paris (co-author with Olivier Michelon).
In 2013 Bajac was made a Chevalier (knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Dr. Mary Panzer
Dr. Mary Panzer is a curator and author. She was the curator of photography at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery from 1992 to 2000, where she developed exhibitions, acquired photographs for the Museum’s collections and organized educational programs. She worked on producing the Museum’s first website.
She is the author of Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955 (2005), Separate But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of H.C. Anderson (2002), and works on photographers Philippe Halsman, Lewis Hine, and Mathew Brady, among others.
Dr. Bjoern Egging
Dr. Bjoern Egging is a German curator of art and photography. He has organized exhibitions and published works on the subject of classical modernism in art. He is presently the curator of the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Dresden Staatliche Kunstammlungen where he is responsible for photography, and 20th and 21st century drawings and prints.
Previously, he was exhibition curator at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, the director of the Lyonel-Feininger-Galerie in Quedlinburg, and assistant curator at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld.
Dr. Daniel Walkowitz
Daniel J. Walkowitz is a professor Emeritus of history and metropolitan studies at New York University. He studied under labor historian Herbert Gutman, and specialized in labor history, urban history, and public history.
He co-founded NYU's graduate public history program in 1981 and also headed the undergraduate program in metropolitan studies.
Walkowitz co-directed several historical documentaries and dramatizations for PBS with NYU media studies Professor Barbara Abrash.