Nat Farbman, born 1907, was a Polish photographer. Farbman worked for LIFE magazine from 1946–61.
Farbman was born in Poland, migrating to United States 1911. At the University of Santa Clara Farbman enrolled in electrical engineering. He became a photojournalist, commercial and fashion photographer. He married Patsy (Pat) English, a model who had become a photographer, in 1938. She had learned photography from Ansel Adams whom she met in 1936, modelling for him on commercial jobs.
His first overseas assignment for LIFE was to cover the Greek elections for the April 22, 1946 edition. He and Pat travelled then to Italy, Austria, and South Africa, where they photographed Boer farmers for the December 18, 1946 edition.
They produced a series of photographs of the Bechuanaland (now Botswana) bushmen tribes in 1947, six of which were used in The Family of Man, an ambitious exhibition, which brought together hundreds of images by photographers working around the world, a forthright declaration of global solidarity in the decade following World War II. The most famous of Farbman's photography's being ‘Kung San storyteller’.
The couple then travelled in the UK, France and Poland to photograph postwar recovery in Europe. His 1965 coverage of the California floods in colour was amongst his last LIFE assignments, but he continued to practice into the 1970s.
Nat Farbman died in 1988, aged 81. He is best remembered for his candid photography and street photography.
