DAY 353

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

David “Chim” Seymour (1911–1956)

ALTRUISTIC PHOTOJOURNALIST

Known as “Chim” because his Polish surname, Syzmin, was difficult to pronounce, David Seymour was a photojournalist who covered wars and their aftermaths from the 1930s to the 1950s. Born in Warsaw, he became interested in photography while studying in Paris, and began working as a photojournalist in 1933, documenting the plight of the French working class, from coal miners to gun-makers. He was known for his compassion for and treatment of human suffering, especially that of orphaned children, the refugees of the many wars he documented.

Seymour worked with a Leica, a camera that allowed him a high level of mobility and anonymity, and was favored by his photographic colleague Henri Cartier-Bresson, with whom (along with Robert Capa and George Rodger) he founded the world-famous Magnum Photos, a photographic cooperative now in its sixth decade of existence (see page 269).

Seymour enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1940 and served in Europe as a photographic interpreter during World War II. He later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He also covered the Spanish Civil War, demonstrations by French workers in the 1930s, and struggles in Greece, Poland, Italy, and Israel. He became president of Magnum Photos after Robert Capa’s death in 1954, until his own life was ended suddenly in Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956, when he and fellow photographer Jean Roy were caught in machine-gun fire. —GC