Ernst Cohen (1923-2009) was an amateur photographer who lived in Brooklyn, New York for most of his life. He was born in Berlin, Germany, to David (Yitzhak) Cohen and Sarah Littmann Cohen. His father was a well known Cantor at a large synagogue in Berlin. In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, his parents sent Ernst and his brother to live with his mother's half sister, Clara Hirsch, and her husband, a physician in Brooklyn. Tragically, he never saw his parents again, for they were imprisoned and killed at Auschwitz in 1942.

After graduating from City University of New York, Ernst became a long-time employee of the Social Security Administration. He developed an interest in photography while still in high school, using an old pre-war Leica camera to shoot portraits and street scenes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Eventually, he created a darkroom in his Brooklyn Heights apartment and developed his own negatives and prints.

Never married, Ernst Cohen bequeathed the contents of his apartment to his friend and neighbor, Elizabeth Cohan, who offered his photographs to the New-York Historical Society and the Brooklyn Historical Society. Ms. Cohan also provided the biographical information for this finding aide in an oral interview as well as a short written biography, a copy of which is located in the Print Room collection files.