The Children of Europe

In 1942, Seymour joined the U.S. Army, became a citizen (taking the name David Robert Seymour), and served as an aerial photo interpreter in the European theatre of World War II. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service. In 1947 he returned to photojournalism with an assignment from This Week magazine titled “We Went Back,” photographs of post-war Germany to be published in commemoration of the second anniversary of the end of the war. While abroad, Seymour received notice that he had been appointed founding vice-president of Magnum Photos, a revolutionary international picture agency conceived by Capa and run by photographers rather than editors. The founding partners also included Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and William Vandivert, among others. With the autonomy afforded by this new vehicle for distribution of his images, Seymour was able to focus on what would become his best known and most respected body of work: a collective photographic portrait of Europe’s indigent children.

During 1948 and 1949, Seymour traveled to Italy, Hungary, Greece, Poland, and Austria on assignment for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). He photographed young people who were orphaned by World War II, displaced with their families from their homes or home-countries, or living in extreme poverty in the aftermath of the conflict. Seymour often would photograph from the eye level of his young subjects, allowing viewers to gain something of the child’s perspective of the world. His facility with languages helped him establish a rapport with children from many nations. He instinctively understood and sympathized with children, and they, in turn, responded to and trusted him. Seymour’s compassionate photographs of children reveal images of hope in a landscape destroyed by war.

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