(November 20, 1911, Varsovia, Poland – November, 10, 1956, Qantara, Egypt)
David Seymour, also known by the pseudonym “Chim” (registered at birth as David Robert Szymin) was a photographer and a founding member of the Magnum Photography Agency.
He grew up in Poland and Russia, and began his studies in art and photography in Leipzig in 1929. In 1931 he traveled to Paris, where he finished his studies in 1933.
In Paris, he meets Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and Henri Cartier-Bresson. As an antifascist, he traveled to Spain in 1936 and photographed the horror of the civil war.
In 1939 he returned to Paris and from there traveled to Mexico. He then settled in New York and served as a photographer and interpreter for the United States Army in World War II until 1945. In 1942, he became an American national.3 After the war, he traveled to Czechoslovakia to Poland, Germany, Greece, and Unesco. Italy to document the effects of the war on children. In 1949 he published the book “Children of Europe” .
In 1947, together with Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger, he founded the Magnum Agency for photography. After the death of his brother Robert in 1954, he became President of Magnum.
On November 10, 1956, during the Suez crisis, he was machine-gunned, while driving, along with the French photographer Jean Roy, by Egyptian soldiers at the border crossing, where he wanted to report on an exchange of prisoners on the Canal from Suez.
Some of his Photos
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