Bernstein grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City, the oldest son of Jewish immigrants from Romania.
Like many of his contemporaries, Bernstein was forced to leave school—in his case, Seward Park H.S.—to help support his family after his father was injured.
[1] After selling candy and men's clothing accessories on the streets of New York City for two years, he joined Borrah Minevitch's original Harmonica Rascals[2] (Bernstein had taught himself to play the harmonica when he was seven),[3] a group that toured the country, playing one-night stands wherever they could find work.
Needing to find a way of supporting himself and his wife, he began studying iron drafting and received a diploma on April 14, 1933, from The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York.
Even more than at the Brooklyn Camera Club, Bernstein had the opportunity to meet other, like-minded photographers who gravitated to their own neighborhoods, the people and places they knew best, to find their subject matter.
Over a period of time, he would get to know the place and the people involved, whether they were the marginalized men who lived at the Fulton Fish Market or the staff at the New York Aquarium.
His one-man show at The Queens Museum of Art in 1989, entitled "Coney Island 1943-1987," included photographs taken in this one small area of Brooklyn over a forty-year period.
"[3] It is only a short step from that idea to what Bernstein himself wrote in 1969, "...I believe that every photograph is a statement by the person taking the picture about how he feels and sees the world and himself.
Four years after Grossman's death in 1954, one of Bernstein's colleagues urged him to study with the American poet, critic, and philosopher Eli Siegel.
Just as Grossman continued to teach privately after he left The Photo League in 1949, so too, Bernstein conducted weekly sessions from his home for many years.
Smith had previously recommended him for a Guggenheim grant in a "Confidential Report on Candidate for Fellowship" from December 1969, as had Wynn Bullock in a letter dated November 17, 1966.
The following year, Bernstein taught a similar class, "Creative Approach to Photography," at the Phoenix School for Art and Design.
[14] After he had spent years photographing at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, he was asked to share some of what he had learned in a course entitled "Aquatic Awareness," which he conducted from 1980 to 1985.
[13] He also authored a column entitled "Critique" in the magazine Camera 35 from 1968 to 1973,[13] which enabled him to reach a wider audience throughout the United States.
In 1957, he was asked to participate in an exhibition that Nancy Newhalll curated for the United States Information Agency, and for which Ansel Adams created all the prints.
It was Cornell Capa, the ICP's executive director, who in the brochure for the exhibition described Bernstein as "the Walter Mitty of photography," and added that "This first retrospective of infectious optimism belongs to a man whose preserved memories are his treasures.