Chronology

Born November 7 (an identical twin) in Brooklyn, New York of Austrian immigrant parents.

Educated in Brooklyn. Attends Abraham Lincoln High School.

Decides to be a photographer after seeing photographs by Stieglitz and Weegee. Parents offer him a Box Brownie.

Joins the Photo League. Takes course in basic technique. Only photography lessons ever taken. Works in the cabinet workshop run by his father. Meanwhile photographs with a 20×25 and an Ikkoflex. Encouraged by Steiglitz and Paul Strand. Begins lifelong practice of always printing his own work in the darkroom.

At eighteen enlists in the US Army in the Signal Corp asking to be trained as a combat photographer. Sent as a military student engineer to Princeton University.

Signal Core Repairman, Crowder Missouri, and Signal Core Photographic Darkroom, Long Island City.

Combat photographer sent first to New Guinea where attached to invasion fleet going to island of Mindoro. Next assignment with the 32nd infantry division fighting in mountains of Bagio, Luzon, Philippines. Eventually sent to Japan after armistice arriving in Hiroshima. Discharged from army in December of 1945.

First photographs ever published in an article titled « Louis Stettner by Sid Grossman » in the New ICONOGRAPH, 1947

Leaves in July for a three week trip to France and remains five years, living in Paris. Receives a commission from the Photo League to gather prints from significant French photographers and organizes the first exhibition of contemporary French photography in the United States at the League’s gallery (1948) including work of Brassai, Izis, Boubat, Doisneau, Ronis, Masclet, etc. On going friendship with Brassai, who is his maitre, and Edouard Boubat. Studies sculpture with Ossip Zadkine under the auspices of the GI Bill.

First exhibits in Salon des Independents, Bibliotheque Nationale. First photographs published: Ten Photographs by Louis Stettner, Introduction by Brassai.

Prize winner in Life’s Young Photographers Contest. Reconnects with Paul Strand.

Completes studies in cinema at IDHEC, Paris University. Photographs Paris continually during this period.

Returns to the United States.

Photographs New York and works as freelance photographer for Life, Time. Fortune. Paris-Match, Realities, National Geographic as well as advertising firms in US and Europe. Also photographed for Marshall Plan but fired after visit from FBI for not revealing political views of Photo League members.

Periodic trips to photograph Paris, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Holland and Mexico.

Pepe and Tony, Spanish Fishermen Series, Ibiza, Spain

Creative Photography fellowships at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York. Meets Saul Bellow.

Works freelance in Paris. Chief photographer with Havas for a year.

Photo-journalist for MD Magazine, New York.

Writes a monthly feature first entitled “Speaking Out” and then “A Humanist View” for Camera 35 offering personal views as well as a reflection of cross-currents of photography in the Seventies.

Professor of Photography at CW Post Center, Long Island University. (’76 Lectures at ICP, New York and Bennington College Vermont).

Awarded First Prize, Pravda World Contest. Travels six weeks photographing in the Soviet Union.

Edits book Weegee the Famous. Begins taking photographs of landscapes (Montana, Wyoming, New York, France).

Concentrates on personal creative work. Produces a number of series including Still Lifes (1983/84); Cityscapes (1985); The Manhattan Trilogy: On the Bowery (1986), Lower Manhattan (1987/88), and Midtown; Brooklyn Bridge (1988); Manhattan Walls (1990); Pavement (1990); Nature, Nudes, and Portraits.

Returns to France permanently to photograph, paint, and sculpt in Saint-Ouen (Seine Saint Denis).

Receives the medal of the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Retrospective, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

Ici Ailleurs Exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Dies in Paris on October 13 at the age of ninety-three.