Fritz Henle, a prolific freelance photographer renowned for his stylish travel pictures, died on Sunday at Teachers Hospital in San Juan, P.R. He was 83 and lived in St. Croix, V.I.
His son, Martin, said the cause of death was heart failure.
Mr. Henle was born in Dortmund, Germany, and studied photography in Munich before coming to the United States in 1936. He soon began to do freelance assignments for magazines including Life, Mademoiselle, Holiday and Harper's Bazaar. He became widely known for his classically composed black-and-white images.
In 1937, he published his first book of travel photographs, on Japan. Later, he produced about 20 other books, including volumes on China, Mexico, Hawaii and Europe. Mr. Henle also wrote influential guides to amateur photography, notably "Fritz Henle's Guide to Rollei Photography" (1956).
Mr. Henle moved to the Virgin Islands from New York in 1948. He photographed throughout the Caribbean, and in 1972 he published a portfolio of pictures taken in the Virgin Islands.
In 1980 Mr. Henle's photographs were shown at the Witkin Gallery in Manhattan. A retrospective of his work is planned in Dortmund in 1994.
In addition to his son Martin, of St. Croix, he is survived by his wife, Marguerite; two daughters, Tina and Maria, of St. Croix; another son, Jan, of New York City and Puerto Rico, and a sister, Anne Marie Pope of Washington.