In the Works
The Fein Story Behind the Pictures
A Revealing Look at the Famous Images of Pulitzer Prize Photographer Nat Fein

David Nieves, curator and administrator of the Nat Fein estate is currently assembling a book about the life and pictures of one of America's finest photojournalists. David Nieves has written a compilation of behind the scene stories which add a unique insight to the famous pictures of Pulitzer Prize photographer Nat Fein. This photo essay includes 104 photographs of old New York, as well as famous personalities of a bygone era. Biographical elements help illustrate the extraordinary life of Fein. From Fein's boyhood brush with death when gangster Legs Diamond attempted to murder him, to the fateful day he photographed the dying Babe Ruth, The Fein Story Behind the Pictures offers a humorous and entertaining look at this master of the lens. This book will be a delight to fine art photo collectors, photography enthusiasts and those interested in New York City nostalgia.
Photo by David M Spindel

“This book is well done” says Hal Buell, longtime Chief Photo Editor of the Associated Press. Buell is also a well known authority on picture journalism in the years before and after World War II and has published several successful books on the subject of news photography. Buell goes on to say, “Nat Fein was a classic photographer of the time period. He came up the hard way, as was the routine in those days, learning photography a spoonful at a time. He was street smart and highly competitive at a time when many newspapers reported the daily stories of New York. He had that rare, ever so valuable gift of making direct contact with his subject. Nat was instantly likable and that led to good pictures. More than most of his generation, he had an eye for the offbeat, the odd and the insightful and his pictures offer a remarkable and telling glimpse of the time and place”.

Nat Fein has been featured in two HBO television specials and is the subject of an article in the July 2006 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. He had an unconventional knack for communicating through pictures and much has been editorialized about his compelling images. Albert Einstein, Queen Elizabeth, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy were among the many icons photographed by Nat Fein. His work is continually exhibited at the finest art galleries.

More About the Author

David Nieves is a former New York City homicide detective. After retiring from the police department he took to the skies to capture New York from the air as an aerial photographer and exhibits his work at art galleries in the Hudson Valley. He has also published an article about Nat Fein, The Ghost of Babe Ruth in Town Line Magazine.

Nieves' love of photography stems from a long and endearing relationship with Nat Fein who had become a second father to him. Upon Fein's death in 2000, Nieves was left to manage Fein's interests along with what is described by many, as some of the greatest journalistic photography of the twentieth century. After listening to countless narrations of Nat Fein’s newspaper exploits over the years and researching thousands of his images, David Nieves decided to share these remarkable stories.