John D. Schiff was born as Hans Schiff on November 7, 1907 in Cologne, Germany. He learned photography and took photos for several Jewish organizations, but worked primarily in his father’s company as a traveling salesman. He escaped Nazi-Germany to England in 1939 and then immigrated to the United States, where he started working as a freelance commercial photographer, specializing in the depiction of art work on location for art dealers and artists. – John Schiff was married to the physician Trude née Löwenstein. He died in New York in September 1976. The Leo Baeck Institute's John D. Schiff Collection includes photographic portraits of internationally renowned artists and some of their works, created by the photographer John D. Schiff in the 1940s through the 1960s.