| Names: | Born: David Szymin
Born: Dawid Szymin
Other: David Chim Seymour
Other: David Seymour
|
| | Dates: | 1911, 20 November - 1956, 10 November | | Born: | Warsaw, Poland | | Died: | Suez (?) | | Active: | Global | | Website: | www.davidseymour.com |
David Seymour. Photojournalist, war photographer and a founder member of Magnum in 1947.Preparing biographies
With the intention of entering his family’s printing and publishing business, David Seymour studied at the Academy of Graphic and Book Arts in Leipzig, Germany, from 1929 to 1931. Because of the worsening political situation in Germany, he then moved to Paris to study chemistry in 1932. Soon economic difficulties in Poland meant that he had to supplement his allowance, so he took up photography to earn a living. Adopting the nickname ‘Chim’ (a French phonetic abbreviation of his Polish-Jewish surname Szymin), Seymour worked as a freelance photographer, publishing picture stories in Regards, the Popular Front illustrated magazine, from 1934.
From 1936 to 1938 he covered the Spanish Civil War, before moving on assignment to Mexico for the newly created Paris Match magazine. When the Second World War broke out, he changed his surname to Seymour and moved to the USA, where he worked in photo-reconnaissance for the US army.
In 1947 Seymour co-founded the Magnum photographer’s agency with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa (whom he had met in Paris in the 1930s), George Rodger and William Vandivert. He returned to Europe in 1948, commissioned by UNICEF to take pictures of displaced children, a project that helped to establish his reputation. Seymour worked as Magnum’s representative in Europe and Israel during the 1950s but was killed while reporting the Suez crisis of 1956.
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 11 Nov 2011.
SHARED BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION PROJECT
We welcome institutions and scholars willing to test the sharing of biographies for the benefit of the photo-history community. The biography above is a part of this trial.
If you find any errors please email us details so they can be corrected as soon as possible. |
|
| | Premium content for those who want to understand photography |
References are available for subscribers.There is so much more to explore when you subscribe.
Subscriptions
| | Portraits
If you have a portrait of this photographer or know of the whereabouts of one we would be most grateful.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
|
Exhibitions on this website |
| | Premium content for those who want to understand photography |
Visual indexes for this photographer are available for subscribers.There is so much more to explore when you subscribe.
Subscriptions
| Wikipedia has a biography of this photographer. | Show on this site | Go to website | | Getty Research, Los Angeles, USA has an ULAN (Union List of Artists Names Online) entry for this photographer. This is useful for checking names and they frequently provide a brief biography. | | Go to website | Grove Art Online (www.groveart.com) has a biography of this artist.
[NOTE: This is a subscription service and you will need to pay an annual fee to access the content.] | Show on this site | Go to website |
Chim: The Photographs of David Seymour
https://www.icp.org ...
| Magnum Photos
https://www.magnumphotos.com ...
Probably the world‘s most famous photo agency for photojournalists. Use this site to access the portfolios, biographies of the many notable Magnum photographers. Where there are books by the photographers the website frequently includes the photographs used.
| Chim: David Seymour's Humanist Photography
https://www.nga.gov ...
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
| Chim Archive
https://www.davidseymour.com ...
This archive contains personal and work-related letters, documents and photos of David Seymour (Chim).
|
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
|
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint