Fifth Avenue, New York

The son of expatriate painter Lyonel Feininger, Andreas Feininger grew up in Germany in a heady climate of avant-garde art and thought. He took up photography in 1927 and quickly achieved international recognition with his inclusion in the prestigious 1929 Film and Foto exhibition in Stuttgart. In 1934, Feininger developed his trademark extreme telephoto technique, which allowed him both to look far into the distance and to visually compress space. After moving to the United States in 1939, he used this approach to suggest the vast size and restless energies of the nation. In this image, one of his most famous, Feininger's long lens transforms New York's Fifth Avenue into a dense tapestry of activity.