Black Star is a New York City-based photographic agency that offers photojournalism, corporate assignment photography and stock photography services worldwide. Black Star was founded in 1935 by Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld, and Ernest Mayer, three German Jews fleeing the Nazi regime. When Life was launched in 1936, Black Star became an important supplier of photographs to the new magazine. According to photo historian Marianne Fulton, Life brought Black Star 30 to 40 per cent of its business.
