He studied classical violin and mandolin as an adolescent, achieving concert-level mastery, and moved to Vienna as a youth to perform, later pursuing apprenticeships in portrait photography.
Facing rising anti-Semitic violence and no career prospects as a photographer in his beloved Vienna, as well as the death of his mother Fannie Kriegsman (née Koerner), Kriegsmann and his siblings left for New York via Hamburg on the SS St. Louis on 20 September 1929, with little to no ability to speak English.
"[H]is talents put him in a class with three of the most prominent celebrity shutterbugs in America at that time, including Tony Bruno, a Hollywood photographer who moved to New York and set up shop in Carnegie Hall; Maurice Seymour, who was actually two brothers named Maurice Zeldman and Seymour Zeldman, both based in Chicago, one of which would formally change his name to Maurice Seymour and later work for Kriegsmann in his New York studio; and the legendary George Hurrell, who took classic portraits of stars like Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich during Hollywood's golden era."
Kriegsmann's first celebrity photographs were taken when the famous aerialist family the Flying Wallendas visited the Strand Studio where he was employed, and he was the only employee able to speak with them in their own language.
[2] Kriegsmann photographed many Motown notables, as well as Bill "Mr. Bojangles" Robinson, Glenn Miller, Florence Ballard, Cab Calloway, Frank Sinatra (also with daughter Nancy on his knee), Ray Conniff, Bill Haley, Sid Caesar, Benny Goodman, Ray Charles, Martha Raye, Doris Day, Milton Berle, Duke Ellington, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "Little" Stevie Wonder, Tom & Jerry (later Simon and Garfunkel), Gladys Knight & the Pips, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, the Monitors, Edwin Starr, the Originals, Tammi Terrell and hundreds more.
In 1940, Kriegsmann hired Brooklyn-born Eugenie "Genie" Conran, a beautiful young woman of 17, who, along with a number of other glamorous and older women, had responded to an ad for a receptionist for his studio.