Rarity 16.8/100 · Collector 0/100 · Deal 19.69/100 · Listings: 2 · Avg price: $602.98 · Min price: $499.00

These scores use the legacy monthly asking-price aggregate. They do not use the new exact-edition, condition, completeness, and destination-shipping rules.

Published in 2008, The Fein Story Behind the Pictures examines the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning press photographer Nat Fein through 118 photographs accompanied by short narratives, historical accounts, and descriptive texts. Written by David Nieves and issued by The Nat Fein Collection Inc, the 144-page book is concerned not only with recognizable images but also with the assignments, encounters, and circumstances from which they emerged.

Fein worked for the New York Herald Tribune from 1933 to 1966, a span that placed him close to the public life of New York during a defining period of the twentieth century. His subjects included Albert Einstein, Ty Cobb, Queen Elizabeth, and Harry S. Truman. Yet the book’s scope is broader than a procession of prominent names: its combination of photographs and contextual writing presents news photography as a practice shaped by access, observation, and the unpredictable character of events.

At its center is Fein’s photograph of the ailing Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium, the first sports picture to receive a Pulitzer Prize. The image supplies an important point of reference, but the publication sets it within a larger working life. Biographical passages—including an account of Fein’s encounter with gangster Legs Diamond—connect the photographer’s pictures to the hazards and contingencies of newspaper work, while the accompanying descriptions return attention to how individual photographs acquired meaning beyond their original assignments.

For collectors of photojournalism, the book deserves attention as a contextual study rather than simply a portfolio of signature pictures. Its distinctive quality lies in the conjunction of image, biography, and historical account: Fein’s photographs are viewed as published records, personal encounters, and elements of a sustained newspaper career. The volume consequently offers a focused way to consider both a major sports photograph and the wider professional practice that made it possible.