The Suez Crisis

The mid-1950s were very difficult for Seymour. Robert Capa died in 1954 after stepping on a land mine while covering the war in Indochina. Seymour succeeded Capa as president of Magnum; it was no easy task to keep Magnum going while pursuing his own photography. In 1956 while Seymour was vacationing in Greece, the Middle East erupted with the Suez Crisis, the conflict resulting from Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal. While the international press corps tried to obtain passage from Athens directly to Port Said, Egypt, Seymour determined that it would be easier to get there from Cyprus. After securing press accreditation documents in Nicosia, he boarded a flight from Cyprus to Port Said with several other journalists including future Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (then a journalist with Newsweek) and Frank White (Time-Life).

Sixteen years had elapsed since Seymour had been in a war zone as a photographer, but he was invigorated by his assignment to document the conflict. On November 10, four days after an armistice had been signed, Seymour rode in a jeep driven by photographer Jean Roy (Paris Match) to cover an exchange of wounded prisoners of war between Egyptian and allied English-French forces. Both men were gunned down as Roy sped down a causeway toward Egyptian lines. The bullet-riddled jeep careened off the road into the freshwater channel parallel to the Suez Canal. Seymour’s body was flown to New York, where more than 300 mourners attended his memorial service.

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