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 a US Army Air Forces navigator during World War II in the 456th Bombardment Group. He was a navigator aboard a B-24 Liberator 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. He was a leader in San Francisco's golden age of advertising design. Clients included Del Monte, Dole, S&W, Paul Masson, Pan-Am Airlines, and Royal Viking Lines.
Many of his students have gone on to illustrious careers in fine art photography, including his last assistant, Alan Ross, who went on to work with Ansel Adams before becoming a leader in Art Photography in his own right.
The Milton "Hal" Halberstadt Papers and Photograph Collection resides at UC Davis special collections archives.

Chronology