Black And White Photography By Nina Leen

Nina Leen (died January 1, 1995) was a Russian-born American photographer, a constant contributor to Life. She is remembered above all for her photographs of animals, many published in book form.
Biography
Born in Russia (probably between 1909 and 1914 although she kept her age a secret), Leen studied painting in Berlin. Before she emigrated to the United States in 1939, she had also lived in Italy and Switzerland. Her first photographs to be published in Life in April 1940 were of tortoises at the Bronx Zoo, taken with her Rolleiflex camera. While she never became a staff photographer at Life, she contributed as a contract photographer until the magazine closed in 1972. Leen was a prolific photographer of fashion for LIFE, and was long married to the fashion photographer Serge Balkin. She was recognised with inclusion by Edward Steichen of two of her photographs in The Family of Man international touring exhibition; one a photograph of a child at a blackboard, the other, several generations of an Ozark farming family (later selected by Carl Sagan for the 12 inch golden phonograph record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth for the Voyager Missions).