Russian: Алексей Бродович; born 1898 in Ogolichi, now Belarus; died April 15, 1971, in Le Thor, France, was an American graphic designer of Russian origin. He is regarded as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century graphic design, magazine layout, and photographic education.

Life and Work

Brodovitch emigrated from Soviet Russia to Paris in 1920. There, he designed stage sets for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and worked as a book designer, producing layouts for magazines such as Arts et Métiers graphiques and Cahiers d’Art. Between 1926 and 1930, he was active as a poster and exhibition designer.

In 1930, Brodovitch moved to the United States, settling initially in Philadelphia, where he founded a class in advertising design at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. In 1934, he relocated to New York and became art director of the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, a position he held until 1958.

During his tenure at Harper’s Bazaar, Brodovitch defined the magazine’s distinctive visual language: sharp, elegant typography combined with generous use of white space and an openness to European modern art and photography. He collaborated with leading artists and photographers such as Martin Munkácsi, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, A. M. Cassandre, Salvador Dalí, Herbert Bayer, and later Richard Avedon. This approach revolutionized magazine design and profoundly influenced visual culture in the United States.

In 1945, Brodovitch published Ballet, an experimental photobook featuring stage photography that challenged established photographic conventions. The images were taken between 1935 and 1937 using a small-format camera without a tripod or additional lighting, relying solely on available light. Motion blur, overexposed highlights, strong contrast, and coarse grain became defining elements of the book’s visual style. These qualities were further emphasized through darkroom techniques, enlarged crops, and high-contrast printing. The book’s full-page, facing-image layouts created a cinematic rhythm and are widely regarded as a landmark in photobook history.

In 1941, Brodovitch established a “Design Laboratory” at the New School for Social Research in New York. As a teacher, he influenced a generation of photographers and designers, including Louis Faurer, Lillian Bassman, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon. Due to illness, he ended his teaching activities in 1966 and returned to France the following year. He died in 1971 in Le Thor, in southern France.

In 1972, Alexey Brodovitch was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Art Directors Club.

Reference

Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition.
Retrieved January 19, 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Brodowitsch