Erika Stone
1924 -
Home page: http://www.erikastone.com
Archive contact: Erika Stone (stone-e@worldnet.att.net) or Katrina Doerner (katrinadoerner@earthlink.net)
Erika Stone (b. Erika Klopfer June 29, 1924 in Frankfurt, Germany) began taking pictures in Munich, Germany at the age of 10 with a Brownie. Later, after emigrating to the US, her father gave her his Voigtlander Superb and at 16, she started an after school business of photographing neighborhood children and selling the pictures to the parents, in order to help her family who were financially stressed. She had majored in art in high school but since she could not afford to continue her education, she found a job with the help of Fritz Henle, at Leco, the only professional photo lab at that time. Later she studied with Berenice Abbott and George Tice at the New School and attended City College at night. In order to find a darkroom, she joined the New York Photo League and realized that they did the photography which really inspired her.
After a number of other jobs, she landed one with the international picture agency "The European Picture Service" and later, she and a partner started "Photo Representatives" and sold the work of many well known photographers, including Weegee. She, herself, became a stringer for Time Magazine and the German publication, Der Spiegel. A year after her first son was born, she gave up the agency and started freelancing. She began photographing her children and others and made a successful career by specializing in children and family and working for most baby and family magazines and text book publishers. She always continued her own photo journalistic work and walked the streets of New York in search of new subjects. She also traveled widely. Her work is in the collections of numerous museums, as well as publications, worldwide. Two books of her work, Mostly People and Especially The People, have been published. For more info, see her web site www.erikastone.com.