LORANT, STEFAN

born Feb. 22, 1901, Budapest Hungarian-born U.S. editor, author, and pioneer in photojournalism. Lorant attended the Academy of Economics in Budapest and then worked as a director, cameraman, and editor of films in Vienna and Berlin. From 1926 to 1933 he was editor in chief of the renowned Mnchner Illustrierte Presse and in this position did much to influence and develop the new field of photojournalism, which at that time had its greatest practitioners and patrons in Germany. After a brief imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp, Lorant went to England (1934), where he created three of the country's most popular picture magazinesWeekly Illustrated (founder and editor, 1934), Lilliput (editor in chief, 193740), and Picture Post (193840). He came to the United States in 1940 (naturalized in 1948). Lorant's influence on photojournalism was enormous, particularly in its beginnings. In addition to promoting the careers of such photographers as Felix Man, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Robert Capa, he formulated many of the most basic precepts of the profession. He believed that photojournalists should not arrange a picture but record events as they occur. An innovative magazine editor, he instituted picture layouts with photos contrasting in size and mood, set on facing pages, a practice now standard in journalism. He felt that pictures should be organized so that they told a story and not appear just as a collection of snapshots. In the United States, Lorant is perhaps best known for his works on the presidency. His Lincoln: His Life in Photographs (1941; rev. ed. 1957) created the genre of the pictorial biography. Other works include The New World (1946; rev. ed. 1965), F.D.R. (1950), The Presidency (1951), and Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (1952; rev. ed. 1969). He also wrote two autobiographical works, I Was Hitler's Prisoner (1935) and My Years in England (1982).