Natascha Artin Brunswick was the daughter of Naum Jasny [ru], a Russian Jewish economist from Kharkiv.

After the Bolsheviks took control of Georgia, the family lived in Austria from 1922 to 1924, for a brief period in 1924 in Berlin, and finally moved to Langenhorn, Hamburg, where they remained until 1937.

While still in school, she photographed with a simple box camera and processed her own pictures in the bathroom at home, which served as a makeshift darkroom.

She instead studied mathematics at the University of Hamburg, where she also took courses in art history from Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky.

Because his wife was of Jewish descent, Emil Artin was forced into early retirement from his teaching position under the Nazi Party Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

Since they were prohibited from taking larger sums of money with them, the Artins shipped their entire household, which reflected their modernist sensibilities.

After her move to Princeton, Natascha Artin joined the group around Richard Courant at the mathematics department of New York University.

"[3] After they married in 1929, Emil Artin, who shared her passion for photography, presented her as a gift a precious Leica compact camera.

In 2001, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe organized an exhibition of 227 original prints under the title Hamburg, As I Saw It.