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About the Photographer

Stoumen, Lou

American, 1916-1991

A photographer and filmmaker, Lou Stoumen was born in Springtown, Pennsylvania in 1916. He completed a BA at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1939 and afterward went to work as a freelance photographer in New York. He continued to make photographs throughout his life, publishing nine books of his work, including a 45-year study of Times Square, but he is best known for his career as a filmmaker. Stoumen received two Academy Awards for his documentary films, The True Story of the Civil War (1957) and The Black Fox: The True Story of Adolf Hitler (1964). From 1966 until 1986 Stoumen taught film production at the University of California, Los Angeles. He eventually moved to Sonoma County in Northern California, where he died in 1991.