Tag:magnum
David Seymour (Chim) was a Polish-born American photojournalist and co-founder of Magnum. Seymour is best known for his empathic and moving images of people, especially children, and for his work covering the Second World War and other conflicts. He also photographed celebrities, politicians, and socialites working for magazines such as Life, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. Seymour believed the medium of photography could awaken the public conscience and used his skill to tell stories photographically.
We are only trying to tell a story. Let the 17th-century painters worry about the effects. We’ve got to tell it now, let the news in, show the hungry face, the broken land, anything so that those who are comfortable may be moved a little
David Seymour (Chim)
Early Life
He was born Dawid (Chim) Szymin on November 20, 1911, in Poland to Polish Jewish parents Regina and Benjamin Szymin. His parents were prominent Yiddish and Hebrew book publishers and owners of a bookstore that was a gathering point for Warsaws Jewish intellectuals. Chim was a talented pianist and linguist, fluent in eight languages and studied graphic arts and printing technology in Leipzig. However, with the increasing political and economic unrest at home, he decided to continue his studies in Paris. While studying at Sorbonne University in 1932, he developed an interest in photography.
By 1934 he abbreviated his surname and began stamping his prints ‘Chim’ (pronounced shim) as it was easier to pronounce and more “commercial”. He became friends with Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Besson while they were all working at the RAP picture agency. All three shared an apartment in Paris for a time, and their bathroom doubled as a darkroom.
In the late 1930s, Chim covered the Spanish Civil War. His images gained widespread attention, particularly those that portrayed life behind the lines and the impact of the war on the people of Barcelona, and they were published in Life magazine. In addition, the new French weekly Match assigned Chim and writer George Soria to photograph the defeated Republicans fleeing Spain for France. He also covered the SS Sinaia voyage in 1939, the first ship to carry Spanish refugees to Mexico.
The War Years
In 1939 while he was covering the Spanish civil war, Chim realised it wasn’t safe to return home, so he emigrated to the United States. In 1942, he was drafted, and while training in military intelligence as a photo interpreter at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, he became a naturalised U.S. citizen. During his service, he received a bronze star and was discharged with the rank of Second Lieutenant in 1945
In 1947, Chim, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and William Vandivert founded Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative agency. Magnum was formed to give photographers control over their own assignments and retain copyrights over their own negatives.
Children of Europe
Chim was designated a ‘special consultant’ by UNICEF in March 1948 and was assigned to document the plight of the child survivors of World War II. That year, while on assignment for the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), Chim photographed the children orphaned by the war and irrevocably physically and emotionally damaged.
The assignment would take him to five countries. His visit to a school in Warsaw for disturbed children saw him create one of his most famous images. Tereska’s ‘drawing’ on a blackboard of her’ home’ is a nebulous, incomprehensible scribble, indicating her deep trauma. He later turned the images into the critically acclaimed book Children of Europe (1949). While still on assignment with UNESCO, Chim learned his parents, who had remained behind in Poland during the war, were killed by the Nazis when they liquidated the Otwock Ghetto and sent the inhabitants to Treblinka. The Children of Europe series reflected his raw emotions.
David Seymour (Chim), © David Seymour Estate
Post War
In 1949, Chim moved to Rome. Working on a book on the Vatican, he took over 2,500 photographs, photographing everyone, from workers to the pope during a private audience. Then, in 1951, Robert Capa came up with a large-scale idea – to be handled entirely by Magnum photographers. ‘Generation X’ was about children coming of age after the war. Chim, still in Italy, chose two subjects and, from 1951 to 1955, he photographed traditional religious festivals and processions held in Italian villages. He also made several trips to Israel as the fledgling state was fighting against attacks from neighbouring Arab states. Israel had become extremely important to him, symbolically and emotionally. He saw it as a place of hope for the Jews of Europe.
The 1950s
In 1954 Magnum lost two of its top photographers. Werner Bischof died in a car accident in Peru on May 16, and just nine days later, on May 25, Robert Capa, Magnums president, was killed in Vietnam when he stepped on a landmine.
“My Dear Magnum family, the lump is still in the throat, and the dust not settled yet. The blow is hard, and the reaction slow to come… We have to go on, keep together, and avoid the stunning effects of our sorrow. Maybe through this we will help ourselves, and find strength to keep and develop Magnum—a home for all of us.”
David Seymour
Following Capa’s death, Chim took over the role of President at Magnum. He was also a gifted portrait artist. From 1955-1956, he was the trusted portrait artist of Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini and family, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins, Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, Kirk Douglas, Gina Lollobrigida, Rita Hayworth, Irene Papas, Maria Callas, and many others. In addition, he took portraits of writers and intellectuals like Arturo Toscanini and Bernard Berenson.
Death
On November 10, 1956, Chim covered the Suez Crisis for Newsweek. He and French photographer Jean Roy were driving to photograph an exchange of wounded soldiers at El Quantara. Tragically they were killed by Egyptian machinegun fire. It was four days after the armistice of the 1956 Suez Crisis, ten days before his 45th birthday.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered the founding father of photojournalism. He was also one of the first true street photographers using 35 mm film and pioneering the genre of street photography. He viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. The “decisive moment” refers to capturing a fleeting and spontaneous event, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.
“I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.“
~Henri Cartier Bresson~
The Early Years
Cartier-Bresson was born on August 22, 1908, at Chanteloup, near Paris. His father was a respected and wealthy textile merchant, and he was given a strict Roman Catholic education. Cartier-Bresson’s uncle was an accomplished painter, and under his influence, he studied in Paris with Cubist painter and sculptor Andre Lhote from 1927-28. In 1929 Cartier-Bresson studied literature and painting at the University of Cambridge. While, as a young boy, he had used a Box Brownie, it wasn’t until 1930, after seeing the work of Eugene Atget and Man Ray, that he took a serious interest in photography.
In 1931, during a year on the Ivory Coast, he began recording his experiences. While on the Ivory Coast, he contracted blackwater fever (a form of malaria). Fearing he was dying, he sent a letter home instructing his grandfather to bury him in Normandy while Debussy’s String Quartet was played. His uncle replied his grandfather “finds it expensive and prefers that you return home first”. Fortunately, Cartier-Bresson recovered.
The Unseen Photographer
In 1932 Cartier-Bresson purchased his first 35mm Leica. The small size appealed to him, as he wished to remain silent and unseen when taking photographs. To become even more anonymous in the scene, he covered the bright silver parts of the camera with black tape to make it even less visible. On occasion, he even hid the camera under a handkerchief. Throughout his life, Cartier-Bresson mainly stuck to three fixed lenses – 35mm, 50mm and 135mm.
Between 1932 and 1935, he travelled throughout Eastern Europe, Spain and Mexico. In 1932 Cartier-Bresson took two of his most famous images – The cyclist caught gliding down a cobbled hill at the base of some stone steps in Hyères and The man jumping over a puddle behind the Gare Saint-Lazare.
His first photojournalism images were published in 1937 when, under assignment from the French weekly Regards, he covered the coronation of King George IV and Queen Elizabeth. However, Cartier-Bresson photographed the crowds and people, not taking a single image of the King and Queen. Also, that year, he married a Javanese dancer named Ratna Mohini. They divorced 30 years later.
The War years
Cartier-Bresson joined the French Army’s photographic unit at the outbreak of WWII as a corporal. His work, at this time, involved filming and photographing artillery fire, road bombardments and troop movements. However, in 1940, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. After three attempts, he escaped in 1943 and returned to France with forged papers.
Before being captured, he had buried his beloved Leica on a farm in France near the Vosges mountains. So one of the first things he did after escaping was to return to the farm, dig up his camera, and return to Paris to join the resistance. Finally, after four years of occupation, on August 19, 1944, French Resistance forces and Allied troops began their liberation of Paris. Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger (who would come to be three of the four founders of Magnum Photos) were all there recording the retreat. They documented the historic scenes as the city transformed from a place of oppression to one of freedom.
Founding Magnum
In 1945, Cartier-Bresson and the U.S. photographer Robert Capa, David Seymour and Ernst Haas founded the photographers’ cooperative Magnum Photos. The photographers owned the rights to their images, a novel concept at the time. Under the umbrella of Magnum, Cartier-Bresson concentrated more than ever on photojournalism. He travelled through India, China, Indonesia, and Egypt.
“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
~Henri Cartier-Bresson~
Like Margaret Bourke-White, he was in India to photograph India’s independence from Britain. While there, he photographed Mahatma Gandhi barely 15 minutes before Gandhi was assassinated. The material from those years, plus Europe in the 1950s, became the subjects of several books published between 1952 and 1956. These publications cemented Cartier-Bresson’s reputation as a master of his craft.
Fame and Glory
In 1955, France honoured him when a retrospective exhibition of 400 of his photographs was held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The show then travelled through Europe, the United States, and Japan. At the end of the exhibition, the photographs were consigned to the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) in Paris for posterity. He was also awarded the Overseas Press Club Award and Prix de la Societe Francaise de Photographie.
In 1963 he travelled to and photographed in Cuba, followed by Mexico in 1964 and India in 1965. Then, during the student revolt in Paris in May 1968, he was there with his 35-mm camera. In 1966, after being a photographer for 30 years, he left Magnum and gave up the camera. For the rest of his life, he concentrated on landscapes and portraiture, but with a pen and paintbrush. In 1967 he married Magnum photographer Martine Franck, and the couple had one daughter, Melanie.
“I have always been passionate about painting,” writes Cartier-Bresson. “As a child, I painted on Thursdays and Sundays, and dreamed about it every other day.”
~Henri Cartier-Bresson~
FRANCE. Paris. 1992.
Cartier-Bresson died in Montjustin (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004, aged 95. No cause of death was announced. His wife, Martine Cartier-Besson, passed away in 2012 from Leukemia.