Seymour, David
SEYMOUR, DAVID
SEYMOUR, DAVID (Chim ; 1911–1956), U.S. photographer. Chim was born in Warsaw, where his father was a pioneer Hebrew and Yiddish publisher. He studied photography and the graphic arts at the Leipzig Academy. In 1931 he moved to Paris, where he shared a studio with Robert *Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and became a free-lance press photographer. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he went to Spain and at the end of the war covered the journey of 1,000 Spanish loyalist refugees to Mexico. At the outbreak of World War ii, Chim went to the United States, where he joined the air force and served as a photo intelligence officer. In Paris he rejoined Capa and Cartier-Bresson and together they founded Magnum Photos, one of the foremost international photographic agencies. His first peacetime assignment was a picture story of unesco for which he photographed his moving studies of homeless children in war-torn Europe. He befriended children everywhere, helped to support them, and where possible, settled them in private homes. Chim frequently visited Israel and was killed while covering the Sinai Campaign of 1956.
[Peter Pollack]