Milton Halberstadt

Who was Milton Halberstadt?

Milton Halberstadt had an illustrious career in fine art and commercial photography that spanned seven decades and left a body of work covering genres from abstract art to commercial photography.

Halberstadt studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Bauhaus founded in 1937 by designer-painter László Moholy-Nagy and the concepts from the original Bauhaus in Germany. He served as an assistant to both László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes.

He served as an Air Force navigator during World War II in the Air Force 456th Bomb Group. He was a navigator aboard a B-24 bomber flying over Yugoslavia in 1944 when his aircraft was hit by enemy fire. Despite severe injuries, Halberstadt guided the plane down safely and he received the Distinguished Flying Cross medal for heroism in aerial combat.

M. Halberstadt Illustration studio in San Francisco was known for fine large format studio photography and he changed how food was photographed and used in print. Halberstadt was a colleague and contemporary of Ansel Adams, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and other fine art photographers working in California in the area of Fine Art and Commercial Photography.