REFLECTIONS FROM THE HEART:
Photographs by David Seymour (Chim)
MARCH 18 TO JUNE 4, 2006

When political and economic upheavals in 1930s Europe interrupted David Seymour’s science studies at the Université-Paris Sorbonne, he borrowed a camera and became a photojournalist. Over the next quarter-century, Seymour, who was also known as “Chim,” helped redefine photojournalism by inviting viewers to identify directly with the people he photographed. Ten years after he was killed in 1956 while covering the Suez Crisis in Egypt, Seymour was eulogized by his friend and colleague, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: “Chim picked up his camera the way a doctor takes his stethoscope out of his bag, applying his diagnosis to the condition of the heart. His own was vulnerable.”

Seymour felt deeply the wounds that plagued the human spirit during the 1930s and 1940s. He sought to show in his photographs that hope could prevail in times of turmoil. Many of his best-known images introduced the world to the suffering and resilience of children in the aftermath of war. His humanitarian style established traditions still common in contemporary media. Both as a documentary photographer and as a co-founder of the seminal picture agency Magnum Photos, Seymour’s career inspired subsequent generations of socially concerned photographers and helped change the way people experience distant lives and historic events.

Continue...

:: View images associated with this exhibition