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Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
Subscribe for full access to The Eye of Photography! Thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of photography and its evolution over the past decades, through a unique daily journal.
"Chim used his camera like a doctor takes his stethoscope out of his bag, applying his diagnosis to the state of the heart; his was vulnerable." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
The life of Dawid Szymin - Chimas he liked to be called, followed an extraordinary trajectory. From struggling student in Paris to world-renowned legendary photographer, his partnership with Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger led to the creation of Magnum Photos. One of Magnum's strengths was the diverse personalities of its founders, whose bold vision and camaraderie attracted other renowned photographers. Their high-impact photos, colorful lives, troubled romances and tragic endings continue to inspire young photographers, along with stories of commitment to important causes.
The son of a prominent publisher of books in Yiddish and Hebrew, he was born in Warsaw and was supposed to follow in his father's footsteps, but instead, the vagaries of history pushed him in other directions, so that in the end his life recalls the trajectory of many other artists, many of them Jewish, who had to reinvent themselves in exile in the 1930s.
Weaving together his life and work, this book takes the reader through the different phases of Chim's life: his youth in Poland, his studies at the Leipzig School of Book Design and at the Sorbonne; his early days covering Parisian social life and the Front Populaire, the demonstrations and strikes of the 1930s for illustrated magazines... Viewed at and Regards the Spanish Civil War, where he worked as a special correspondent for Regards and persuaded them to hire Robert Capa and Gerda Taro; his 1939 sea crossing to Mexico on the SS Sinai with 1,600 exiled Spanish Republicans; his life in exile in New York, working for Leco Laboratories; his wartime work as a photographic interpreter in Medmenham, Great Britain; his post-war work in Europe, in particular his famous 1948 series for UNESCO on the children of Europe showing war-traumatized children in five European countries ; his 1950s work in Italy on illiteracy and religious festivals; his coverage of celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Yul Brenner, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Kirk Douglas; politicians - Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill - writers like Bernard Berenson and Carlo Levi, singers like Maria Callas and musicians, notably Arturo Toscanini. His reporting on the Vatican, and his work in Israel; and finally, his involvement in the 1956 Sinai War, culminating in his tragic death in November 1956, alongside Jean Roy of Paris-Match, three days after the ceasefire.
Born in Warsaw into a cultured community speaking Yiddish and Polish, Chim was attached to his Jewish roots, to the specificity of his family environment and to the profession of printer and publisher. During the First World War, when his family had to immigrate to Russia, as a child he made the first of many linguistic transitions from Yiddish to Polish and then to Russian. Later, he learned German, then French and English during the Second World War, as well as Italian after the war: he became a citizen of the world while remaining deeply marked by his early interests in music, literature and design; his interest in literature and music was an important part of the new community he found in Paris among the future members of Magnum Photos, who shared his strong cultural and political interests.
His interest and involvement in the new state of Israel was keen, and from the early 1950s he traveled there and reported regularly. This particular subject is of course linked to Chim's Jewish identity; the birth of Israel was undoubtedly a sign of hope and consolation after the murder of his parents during the Shoah, the destruction of his native Warsaw and its Nowolipki Street neighborhood, and the bombing of Leipzig, the city where he had first studied and discovered international culture.
While he was, like his Magnum colleagues, a versatile traveler in many countries, Chim is remarkable in that he was never just "passing through": even on short assignments, he managed to integrate wherever he went and to sympathize deeply with his subjects. The social diversity of his acquaintances was enormous, from beggars, circus performers and Halles butchers to crippled children, movie stars and writers. Chim also possessed an acute gift for photographing cityscapes and striking landscapes as if they were stage sets. In his compositions, he displayed an almost musical sense of the placement of light and shadows with very different effects: from austere photographs of the concentration camps and courts of Dachau to his views of Berlin in ruins or of a single typewriter destroyed on a pedestal in the ruins of Gijon. Spain. When his pace was more leisurely, he could photograph the sensual landscapes of Spain, Greece, Mexico, Rome, Florence, Sicily and Venice.
Chim's life is emblematic of the shifts and transitions of the 20th century. His complex itinerary took him through two world wars and a civil war, then through the world's attempts to rebuild itself more harmoniously. Following the turbulent currents of history, Chim negotiated with apparent ease the passages from language to language, culture to culture, world to world. Beyond his achievements as an individual, the idea of group or community was always important to him, and his gifts for strategy and administration were evident in his drafting of the Magnum Photos statutes and his presidency of the organization from 1954 to 1956.
During his lifetime and after his death, Chim's Magnum colleagues and a wider circle of photographers recognized his great influence. He is probably best known for his empathy and special relationship with children as the most vulnerable victims of war and social upheaval. As a symbol of children's suffering during war, this photograph has been an enduring source of inspiration for painters and photographers over the years.
Chim was truly one of the first human rights photographers, who, in the tradition of Lewis Hine, Jacob Riis and the FSA photographers, used advocacy as a motor for social change. His photography inaugurated a tradition of photographers working with human rights organizations. Chim's work with children continues to influence younger generations of photojournalists. At a time when the world is experiencing the largest number of displaced people since the Second World War, there is a natural link to be made with his most memorable photographs.
Carole Naggar
Searching for the Light: A biography of David 'Chim' Seymour 1911-1956
by Carole Naggar
DeGruyter ed, September 2022
https://www.degruyter.com/
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