CHIM SEEN BY HIS FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

“We are only trying to tell a story. Let the 17^thcentury painters worry about the effects. We’ve got to tell it now, let the news in, show the hungry face, the broken land, anything so that those who are comfortable may be moved a little.”

Chim quoted by Bob Considine, International News Service, April 1957.

Carole Naggar, July 15, 2007

In the last few years, I have met with the few remaining friends and colleagues of Chim in New York, Paris, and London. These are the memories they shared with me.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“People always credit Capa for Magnum’s success. But it is Chim that was instrumental to the beginnings of the agency; it is him who created the bylaws without which we could not have functioned.”

“In my family, money was a shameful thing. We did not take any holidays. I was sure that they were ruined. During the war, Chim brought them white bread and butter. They did not want to buy on the black market. Chim said, ‘your family eats on silver plates, but only grey noodles.’ ”

“Chim looked pathetic. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Capa was a pal, but Chim was a friend.”

“He would have liked to be buried in the Invalides or at the Vatican. He adored spending his time in the Pope’s entourage, with the prelates.”

“When Chim died I had to make the rounds in Paris and go to all his girlfriends to give them the news. He had promised marriage to every single one of them.”

Interview made in Paris, January 14, 1998.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, who died on August 4, 2004, was a founding member of Magnum Photos and a close friend of Chim since 1947.

George Rodger

“I feel that Chim’s work – his executive work—is vital to all of us and to the continuance of Magnum as a whole. Without the firm hold that he has on Magnum operations, we might well find ourselves in the embarrassing position we were in last year when John came over and told us of the birth of his fabulously costly brainchild— his syndication theme that nearly broke us.  We need Chim’s steadying attention all the time.  On the other hand, we could not put him on a full-time executive basis in place of John because John has qualities that we need and which Chim does not possess.  Also we can’t afford to have both on full time. I would however like to suggest that we ask Chim if he would devote a percentage of his time to Magnum executive affairs in return for a fixed salary. (Not the fantastic $12,000.00 that was voted to Capa.But something in relation to his earnings). This should also include a trip to New York each year expenses paid. Chim is the only person who can look after our financial and business interests and can keep John from being too expensively ambitious. We can ensure his dominance over John by voting him extraordinary presidential powers.  This is not because I distrust John. I have full faith in his integrity. But I do not have confidence in his judgment and, though he is excellent editorially and in the promotional field, he lacks the ability to weigh up the business possibilities of his pet projects and could easily wreck us by being, in all good faith, over-ambitious or not far enough sighted. Chim weighs everything up meticulously and is gratifyingly cautious over financial matters. Let me know please what you think.”

Letter to Henri Cartier-Bresson, September 1956.

The Rodger Archives, Smarden. Kent, U.K.

“Chim wrote in a letter addressed to ‘My Dear Magnum Family’- “we have to go on, keep together, and avoid the stunning effects of sorrow. Maybe, through this, we will help ourselves and find strength to keep and develop Magnum – a home for all of us. He well knew that our strength and our future lay in united endeavor- the Family.”

In “Random Thoughts of a Founder Member”, 1987,
The Rodger Archives, Smarden. Kent.

“Capa thought up the ideas. He was made of ideas I think! And he knew very well how to find people to finance them. He was not a great businessman, but Chim was the one capable of making any idea work, however bizarre. He had a head for details. So that the Capa-Chim combination was excellent.”

Interview by Carole Naggar in “Magnum raconte Paris, Rodger raconte Magnum”, Photomagazine, Paris, November 1977

“Chim came by then took us to the 14 room apartment where he is staying with friends-the Stantons.It is a palatial palace and Chim beams like a Buddha when he sits on a red velvet divan and talks about “Rags to Riches.”

George Rodger’s diary, June 3, 1956.

The Rodger Archives, Smarden, Kent.

“This morning Trudi Feliu telephoned from Paris the unbelievable, tragic news that Chimsky, our dear Chimsky, was killed in Egypt. We feel so sad- so terribly sad…Magnum has been severely hit for the third time.”

George Rodger’s diary, November 12, 1956.

The Rodger Archives, Smarden. Kent.

“Trudi wanted to know how soon we could come over. Henri is holding Magnum together and needs help.”

George Rodger’s diary, November 20, 1956.

The Rodger Archives, Smarden, Kent.

“Cicely’s Mother, who was always a sort of second Mother to me, died two weeks after my father and, with poor Chimsky going in between, it seemed too much all at one time. As they were all strong personalities on whom, through the years, I had learnt to lean on rather heavily for different things, it seemed for a while that everything was toppling down.”

Letter to John G.Morris, December 5, 1956.

 The Rodger Archives, Smarden. Kent.

George Rodger, a British photographer who was a founding member of Magnum and died in the summer of 1995 was a close friend and colleague of Chim since 1947.

William Richardson

“It was ironic that it should have happened here. Chim’s specialty was not war. Not because he was not a courageous man, for he was (…) Only 10 miles away across the desert was the Israeli army Chim had known so well. But on the streets of Port Said, there were children shoeless as they trod on the rubble of bombardment. And although Chim had photographed armies and the great and glamorous of Paris and Hollywood, those who knew him well always carry- each time they venture into Port Said- that image of his picture of a child victim of oppression who had, finally, got his first pair of shoes.”

The New York Post, November 16, 1956.

A journalist for the New York Post in the 1950s, Richardson often wrote texts to accompany Chim’s photographs and saw him whenever Chim visited New York.

Ralph Miller

“The word Shim to an American is a slender wedge between two objects. That is precisely what Seymour’s photographs became: a powerful force driven between war’s starving children and adult indifference.”

World Journal Tribune, November 10, 1956.

Ralph Miller met Chim in the early 1950s through his work as a reporter for the World Journal Tribune.

John Morris

“Seymour was the most enigmatic of the founders. I had met him in New York through Capa. For months, I thought he was a spy, which in a way he became when he worked for Allied Intelligence in London as a photointerpreter. Chim had a way of showing up unexpectedly in my life.”

International Herald Tribune, November 18/19, 1989.

“I know nothing about Chim’s private life. He traveled with Judy Friedberg, with Ann Carnahan. Judy Friedberg was one of the women who hung around Magnum in New York. He liked women but I think he was shy and made a big fuss about children to cover his shyness with women. It would have been the ultimate horror for him to be a father. I could not imagine him changing a diaper-but he remembered the names and birthdays of children of his colleagues.

“Chim’s greatest days were in Rome. He owned that town. He had just moved into his first apartment when he died: things that many find easy, like settling down, having a place of one’s own, did not come easy to Chim. He was already 45 when he got his first apartment in Rome, not far from Hotel Inghilterra.

I must have met him through the Capas. I had met them in the winter of 1939/40. Chim did not speak good English at the time. He must have been in New York.  The first time I heard about his work was through Ed Thompson at LIFE who thought that his photographs were better than Capa’s. But I did not get to know him well at that time.

He reminded me of Peter Lorre, the actor, I thought that he could play the role of a spy in a movie.

Slowly, I got to know him better. I worked for LIFE in New York until 1941. I probably saw him in the Spring of 41. I saw him in London during the war when he was a soldier. He came to visit us at the office on Dean Street.

Our most interesting meeting was his first visit in Paris at the end of the war. I was sitting in a café in Montparnasse across from La Coupole, on the terrace. An army command car stops and Chim gets out. He could not drive or type. We recognized each other. He was flabbergasted. He asked, is Capa alive? He also asked about Henri.  I took him out at the cocktail party, which is in my book. This was September 1944 and I had hitchhiked from Normandy.

“People Are People” is the first time I ever assigned Chim to any story. He did France and Germany. He was easy to work with and was very cooperative with editors. I did all the editing on that story.

He visited me and my family in Armonk in 1948-49.

“Chim’s contribution was really on the business side. Henri had no understanding of money. Capa had no sense of business. He was a good promoter and salesman but a terrible administrator.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Paris, May 10, 2005.

John Morris, a picture editor who has worked at LIFE under Henry Luce, for Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post and for Abe Rosenthal at the New York Times, was the first executive editor for Magnum Photos.

Manela Aravantinou

“We arrived in an old Ford to the base of the rocks after driving on a pot-holed road. The rest of the journey was done on foot with a biting wind, through puddles, crossing little villages with children and their games. There were any number of them, ragged and gathered in a circle, scrutinizing, touching and eyeing us suspiciously. The girl who walked with us to the turning was dark and thin with narrow red ribbons in her hair.  She was separate, cut off from the others, wanting a special photograph to herself. In return, she promised to show Chim the largest and most beautiful stronghold.  Can you see it? She said.

“There seemed to be no building anywhere. The rock looked the same on all sides and I could just discern the path winding up to the top where there was no stronghold at all.

Chim, however, declared that he saw it.”

Unpublished text to book on Meteoras Monastery, Greece, November 1954.The Ben Shneiderman Archives, Washington, D.C.

Manuela Aravantinou is a Greek writer who met Chim in the early 1950s and traveled with him to Meteoras.

Erich Hartmann

“As the pain of realizing the untimely deaths of Chim, and of Bob and Werner, has been absorbed in Magnum and in every member, the magnitude of the work which these great and gifted men have left us becomes increasingly clearer and continues to have influence over us and over our work. Anyone who comes into contact with Chim’s work is moved and impressed and is inspired.”

Letter to Ms Eileen Shneiderman, February 26, 1962.

Erich Hartmann, who died in 1999, had been a member of Magnum Photos since 1951. Among his main works is his five-year survey of the Nazi camps throughout Europe, from Auschwitz to Treblinka.

Georges Fèvre

“I knew of him his pictures of refugee children and I made prints of those with Pierre Gassmann for the UNESCO in the beginnings of Picto rue de la Comète. These images were a revelation for many people who had not measured the atrocity of what had happened during World War II.

Chim was a gentleman, sensitive and discreet, and very friendly. He liked the prints I had made. It was in 1956, a little before his departure for the Suez Canal affair.

“After the death, Magnum’s morale was at all times low. Chim’s death was inadmissible, incomprehensible.

“David Seymour had this sensibility, this emotion that he has know how to transmit after feeling it for himself.

“Aesthetics was maybe not his first preoccupation. We were discovering how much horror remained after world war.  When he photographed these children, I do not think that he had an aesthetic preoccupation. This came second. The subject in itself was enough. These children did not have a childish expression, in their eyes there was all the suffering that they had gone through. He had the intuition to photograph at the right moment, to catch these looks of children traumatized and left to themselves.

“I was lucky to have a very direct contact with him because I was making the prints of a racehorse, Rebbot, who won all the races at the time. He had photographed this horse as an assignment for a magazine. The photographs were well composed, with a beautiful light. His negatives were always correct, in contrast to many photographers. But you have to be weary even of good negatives. You have to guess through each photographer’s particular vocabulary what they had in mind.

“The few prints that I made for Chim were full frame, except maybe for some 6 x 6cm photographs of children that had to be cropped for publication. The horse’s pictures were in 24 x 36mm”

Interview with Carole Naggar, Paris, May 12 2005.

George Fèvre worked for forty years with Pierre Gassmann, the owner of the photo lab Pictorial Service in Paris and printed many of Magnum’s photographers work including Henri Cartier-Bresson. He died in March 2007.

Marc Riboud

“He had asked me to come with him in Italy but it did not happen.  He was one of the few to whom Henri showed his text on the Decisive Moment.

“When I came back from Yugoslavia and Dalmatia, Stevenson was making a trip to Belgrade and I met Chim by chance, we traveled together for a bit. In Paris, I showed him my contact sheets.

“He was very different from all the others. He had a tender side and a mysterious side. He was mysterious about his encounters. He was a very good photographer.

“In spite of all these successive deaths, these were the most beautiful years of my life, everything took on an extraordinary intensity. In those times [in the war] frankness and truth in human relationships were important because if words were brought out of context, you could risk death. We lived very intensely.

“I think I met Chim in the very small office of 125 Faubourg St Honoré. Chim, a little like Capa, we did not really know where he lived.

“There are very ugly men who possess great beauty. Chim was not handsome but his face had a certain impishness and great intelligence. At the time, we did not say “Jewish” or “not Jewish.” Among us, it was not important. Neither Chim nor Capa talked about Judaism. There were more important problems.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Paris, May 14, 2005.

Marc Riboud was invited by Capa to join Magnum Photos in 1953. His photograph of “The Painter of the Eiffel Tower” brought him his first publication in LIFE. He has worked both in color and black and white all over the world and especially in Vietnam, Bangladesh, the Middle East, Japan, China, and recently Turkey.

René Burri

“It is Chim that launched me into photography. He was my padrino.I met him in 1955 when I came to Paris. I had hitchhiked to see Picasso after falling in love with his work in Milan where I had seen Guernica in 1953. I knocked on Picasso’s door for a week in vain, Sabartès would not open.  I crossed the Seine and went to Magnum. They had heard about be from Werner Bischof. I showed some pictures to Trudi Feliu. I went to retrieve my negatives and contact sheets back at Science et Vie, a magazine for whom I had done a reportage on the deaf and mute. I showed those to her and she ordered me some prints. I go back to Zurich and send her some sets of prints. Two months later get an issue of Life with my pictures. I was launched. Chim sent me to Czechoslovakia. He took me under his wing. He came to Zurich. We ate together with Carrese, who was Magnum’s agent in Italy. Chim, this guy who was in the war, always wore three-piece suits, very distinguished. In Paris we walked around with Delpire, Henri, Rossellini and Chim. We wanted to go to dinner but Chim says no, I have an appointment with someone. Later with the whole gang, we pass in front of the Rhumerie Martiniquaise looking for a restaurant and we see Chim in the back, sitting alone. Henri made fun of him, he did his number- ah, you are alone. Chim was mysterious, we did not know who he was waiting for. He had a girlfriend at Lifemagazine in New York who often came to see him.

“Once I arrive in Paris in the beginning of 1956, I was shooting pictures of the frozen Seine. Chim send me to the movie studios of Boulogne-Billancourt:”Renoir is shooting, just tell them my name.” Three minutes later Ingrid Bergman comes out, she kisses me and takes my hand. There was Renoir, Mel Ferrer, Jean Marais, Juliette Gréco. They were shooting “Elena et les Hommes.”  Jean Renoir shook my hand and I did the stills for the movie.

“Chim was generous, he helped the young photographers. He had a magnificent heart. As for Henri, he was e Jesuit priest. He never put me on a story.

“When Chim died, it was among the first griefs in the family, this golden triangle. Everything changed because there was not Chim’s warmth anymore. Trudi, who was close to him, left.

“In the 1960s I arrived in Rome, I had the idea of photographing the Pope. I met the Vatican’s Chief of photography. He said, Magnum? Chim. Even years later his name evoked a power, it opened doors. Immediately he gave me an exclusive inside the Vatican. Later when I was strolling around the Vatican I hear, psstt, I get near a Swiss guard- it was a school friend.

“In 1956 I was leaving for Sicily and I visited Chim in Rome, at the Inghilterra Hotel.

“My first three stories, he is the one who gave me the openings. You react to someone who has in him something that corresponds to your personality. I was a lot in the milieu of “Non Swiss” people. My family was enormous, twelve children. When you have that you want to escape it. Chim also was coming from a clan and escaped it.

“This assignment in Suez was like a total contradiction to who he was.

“He wanted to go beyond all nationalisms and religions and confront himself to paradoxical topics like the Vatican.

“Bischof is the one who first showed my pictures to Chim, Henri and Capa. In his approach to Eastern Europe it was not yet the nervousness of the Leica but the more formal side of the 6 x 6.

“After Capa’s death Chim became the heart and soul of Magnum. He was not competitive, contrary to many of h is colleagues. He gave me a letter of recommendation for Bernie Quint of Life.

“He was a very lonely man I think. We did not know about his sentimental life. He always arrived like Father Christmas with presents for the children of Bischof or Erwitt. He was very delicate, the contrary of a baroudeur.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Paris, May 2005.

René Burri, who first worked as a cameraman, joined Magnum Photos in 1956 and since has done numerous reportages all over the world for Paris Match, the New York Times, LIFE, Jours de France, Vogue, the National Geographic and many other magazines. Among his most celebrated stories are Argentine Gaucho ( 1958) and Che Guevara (1963).

Willy Ronis

“I met him after he came from Poland to Paris, end of 1935 or beginning of 1936. I made my first professional photographs at the time of the popular demonstrations of July 14, 1936.

“Chim developed his photographs in the maid’s room where he lived. He had learnt that I worked with my father who had a photography studio. He asked if he could come and glaze his photos on my glazing machine. Sometimes we worked on similar political topics. There is a photograph he made at the Mur des Fédérés of a famous singing group of four young men. When I saw this photograph in the jubilee year issue of Life, I thought it was mine. But in fact, we were one behind the other when we were shooting. Capa was much more of an extrovert than Chim. Chim was a bit dark, not talkative, not as liberated as Capa.He never talked about his family, only about work, his friends and the Dôme where many photographers coming from Eastern Europe were going. I stopped going there because it was becoming a center of gossip and jealousies.

“Chim had a sense of humor that was a bit cool and he did not exteriorize his feelings much. Like most Eastern Europe refugees, his sympathies were to the left but he had to be a bit cautious because he was a foreigner and they could have sent him back.

Interview by Carole Naggar, Paris, May 2005.

Willy Ronis, a French photographer who was a friend of Capa and Chim in the late 1930s, is a member of the Rapho agency. He is best known for his black and white work on Paris neighborhoods such as Belleville and Menilmontant, made in a humanistic spirit. A large retrospective of his work has recently been shown in Paris.

Elliott Erwitt

“Chim’s life is a bit of a mystery. I think he mostly lived in hotels. He had girlfriends but I never saw him with one. He liked to keep part of his life private. There was a lot going on beneath the surface in this owl-faced person. He liked the good life and knew all the best restaurants –I guess as a reaction after the war.

“In many ways dying young was a very good career move. But the way he died was completely out of character. This Match photographer [ Jean Roy] was the stupidly heroic kind that prevailed at the time.  I photographed him with my son in Paris. He was especially fond of children, had a very tender spot for kids, which seems a bit strange for a bachelor. Family, for Capa and Chim, didn’t fit the job description. He seemed to have a very pleasant life. What personal angst he had would be hard to say.

“We all stayed at Hotel Inghilterra in Rome. It was cheap after the war. There was also the Pastoria in London at Lester Square. He must have had a place in Paris but I did not know about it.  He dressed conservatively and was elegant in Italian suits. He must have liked the Vatican because it was a society with a lot of egos and bullshit artists, and some good people as well, like Magnum.

“He was the voice of logic, he made sense. He seemed very easy with children. I wouldn’t imagine Capa being easy with children.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, New York, March 2005.

Eliott Erwitt, whose career was started with his participation to Steichen’s famous exhibition Family of Man in 1955, has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1958.He has pursued a career in journalism, fashion and advertisement while pursuing his personal photography in a spirit of light humor.  As a reporter, he is remembered by numerous scoops such as his photograph of Nixon and Kruschev. His book on dogs, Son of Bitch, brought him a worldwide reputation.

Ruth Hartmann

“Erich joined Magnum in 1951. He was very fond of Chim, as was everybody. Chim was a very complicated and cultured person. You could use the term “gentle.” He went through a lot but did not have the ego of Henri Cartier-Bresson or the flamboyance of Capa. The Magnum office depended on him for finances and book keeping. They were babes in the wood about running finances. He was the one who found Henri Margolis. Margolis was one of the “grownups” around. Chim figured out how to make it financially viable.

“He was a very retiring sort of person. He was liked and respected by everybody. Erich and him came from the same sort of background. He didn’t talk about himself. Anything you knew about him you knew because somebody else told you.

“When he died I had just had a baby. Nobody could believe it because of the quick succession of deaths.

“They were just a bunch of fanny-pinchers, that’s why Chim came out as a gentleman.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, New York, April 2005.

Ruth Hartmann, Erich Hartmann’s widow, often collaborated with him on his projects and maintains a working relationship with Magnum.

Dave Schoenbrun

“You [Cartier-Bresson] and I know each other very little. And yet Chim was a friend of both of us. He was a man of secret compartments and he forgot to make them communicate.”

An American broadcast journalist who died in 1988, Dave Schoenbrun worked for CBS from 1947 to 1963, primarily as the network’s bureau chief in Paris where he met and befriended Chim. He was part of a second generation of reporters known as Murrow’s boys. The second part of his career (1960s to 1980s) was in New York for radio and television networks.

Trudy Feliu

“We started calling him “Il Papavile” because he loved the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic Church and became so steeped into it. He did not mind at all.

“Sunday night that weekend Bradlee called me at home to tell me he had brought back some film that Chim had given him. Bradlee told me that Chim was going to join Jean Roy who had a tip about an exchange of prisoners. Trying to cover action was not Chim’s style but it was very much a Paris Match thing. The next morning was when we got the news.

“I know more about his death than his life. A Colonel called the office. I remember that he didn’t really want to talk to a woman. I was in touch with Match a lot at the time and talked to Théron almost every day, and he told me that the British Navy was sending a special coffin for Roy, so I asked if they could arrange to have one sent for Chim.

“At the last moment Ernst Haas joined us for the Mass at the Invalides for Jean Roy. Ernst was very impressed, and when we came out he said, “Chim is up there complaining that he is not getting that kind of treatment.”

“After Capa died I was in Ischia when I got a telegram from Korny asking whether I would come to Paris to run the Paris office.

“I met Chim in Rome, driving back from Ischia, in his apartment that was about like a personal office. Before that, I had done TV and worked for Life and Look.

“One of the ideas I had when I came [to Magnum] was to see Theresa Naumann, who had stigmata, for Look. She lived in Lower Bavaria. She refused the photographer and I had to rent a camera.

“I think that Chim was deeply sad. He was floating a little bit. He did enjoy the celebrities. When he died, I had a phone call from the actress who had the lead in “Guys and Dolls.” She loved Chim. She told me she had been Mike Todd’s mistress for several years . She told me that after Mike Todd left her for Elizabeth Taylor and she was really down, he was very kind to her and spent lots of time propping her up. He lived partially vicariously, in particular with Capa.

“In his youth he was quite to the left but he hardly ever spoke about that period and about Spain.

“Maybe he chose Rome because it was away from all the others, or maybe because it was the center of movie-making.

“He may have had girlfriends in several cities. He would always go in a corner to make his little phone calls.  Chim tried to avoid Judy Friedberg but she was very persistent. After his death, she pronounced herself a widow.

“When Chim came we went out to lunch as a group with Henri and Ernst Haas. Henri would always order green beans with garlic and olive oil and Chim would make fun of him.  Ernst used to tease everybody, including Chim, which almost nobody did. But Chim did have an odd sense of humor.

“After Capa’s death Henri did not really want to be president, but he did not completely trust Chim. He had come back from Russia with 360 films and made two sets of contacts so we could both edit, so while we were working he let out a bit. But by 55, a year before Chim died, Henri came to trust him.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Morristown, New Jersey, June 23, 2005.

Trudy Feliu was the editor at Magnum Paris from 1954 to 1956.

Bill and Beverly Pepper

Bill Pepper:

“There was a mixture of purity and sagacity in Chim- a very strange duality.

“I am one of the last people to have seen Chim alive in Italy. I had to do a story on Hadrian’s Villa for Newsweek and Chim was going to Greece to see some friends. We went out to Hadrian’s Villa to take some pictures of the swans in the ruins.  He saw me taking pictures and said,’ don’t tell anybody, I’ll take the pictures.” Then we went to this bakery in Tivoli where we bought bread shaped like dolls with three breasts. That was the sort of thing he loved, and he was taking some to his friends in Greece. At the airport, we said goodbye, and that was it.

“Chim came in and out of our lives unexpectedly like a sunrise.  He extended our inner lives with his feelings.  He was so like an inner voice in our lives, it is strange how he came along.  This correlates with his affinity with children in his photography.  We all have children inside us, the residual element of wonder that is never extinguished, and this is the part he was talking to.

“He was also very practical – as a photographer he had to be- but there was an inner or hyper reality that he saw as an artist. We perceive it inside our lives and sometimes we find it in an artist.

“He was such an incandescent soul that when he died we wept as if we had lost a member of our family.”

Beverly Pepper

“We met Chim around 1953 through Henri Margolis, who introduced us. We were based in Rome. Bill was bureau chief of Newsweek.

“Chim was very special, he was older than we were and he taught us a lot. He taught me how to drink Polish vodka, which no one drank at the time. Up to this day, my preferred drink is vodka and I think of him every time I order one.

“We went together to Alta Coscenza in Calabria, to a Flagellating Festival. It was a kind of Easter Festival, and the pilgrims were rubbing glass into their arms and bleeding and whipping themselves. We had to walk up a hill. Chim walked up backwards and photographed everybody. He was so warm that everybody related to him.  But he was also like Cartier-Bresson in the sense that he made himself invisible. I have seen him go up to people and photograph them right in their face, and they would never flinch.

“At the top of the hill there was a bar, with the only television for the whole town. ‘Let’s not just photograph the fiesta’ he said,’ let’s photograph the people looking at the fiesta.’ It was like Cinema Paradiso.

“He introduced us to some of the most extraordinary people. To all the Life photographers, like Gjon Mili, to the Magnum photographers like Cartier-Bresson. One we got to know well was Dmitri Kessel, who was doing many covers for Life. We sat there with him for hours as he waited for the light to be falling just right on a face for a portrait. Chim said that a photographer had to understand light and had to be patient. No one was more patient than him.

“What was extraordinary was how incredibly modest he was.

“Bill would have gone to Israel but he was working on another story. He said that if he had been with him in Egypt he would never had let him go [to the outpost].

“I never knew particularly how Chim felt about Israel. You could see it in his pictures but he never talked about it.

“I understand his fascination for the Vatican completely.  My husband covered the Vatican and was also fascinated with it. Anyone who lived in Rome lived in mixed centuries. The Vatican represented the past, and the intrigues that went on in the old days still went on. It was a thing of great beauty where he could get great photographs. The priests were not the kind of people he usually photographed. At that time, the photographers were treated far more warmly than they are today. The term paparazzi did not exist. At the Vatican, Chim had carte blanche

“I never saw him with a girlfriend. When he came to dinner, he did not bring a girl. To give you an idea of how discrete he was, nobody even asked him. And nobody I knew knew about it.

“When we traveled together, he treated me like a boy. There was no sense of sexuality. I would say that he was asexual. He was very sensitive in an asexual way. It never occurred to us to even think about him in that sense. Chim came as a whole package.

“He was a gourmet. We went to posh restaurants, but also to very small popular trattorie that later became well-known.

“He gave us a lot of photographs. They are in Todi.

“At the time I was a painter. He was part of our lives and he visited my studio. Chim related to artists because he was one himself.

“What’s fascinating about him is how generous Chim was with his craft. For instance, he gave John Ross lessons on how to use his camera when he was still working for TWA. He later became a photographer in his own right.

“These Life and Magnum photographers had enormous expense accounts. They were treated like superstars.

“To do the kind of photography he did you really have to be selfless, to think of the story first. But there was always that other dimension. The pictures still existed when you took away the story.

“He was not tall. With my heels – at the time women wore heels- I was taller than he was. He always had that old-fashioned European look about him. He always had very good suits, but very neutral.

“With other photographers we went to eat at Ranieri’s, a little restaurant near the Hotel Inghilterra. We hung out at the bar at the Inghilterra. It was off the street, you did not have to go inside the hotel.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, New York, January 2005

Bill Pepper, a reporter for Newsweek in the 1950s and1960s, covered Blessed Pope John XXIII, a hero of the century just closed. During a ceremony in Loreto, a small shrine town on the east coast of Italy, Pope John once greeted Pepper with these words: ‘Well Mr. Pepper, are you still sounding your trumpet of truth?’ Pepper never forgot that affirmation.

Beverly Pepper, a noted sculptor, divides her time between her New York and Rome studios.

Jean and Suzie Marquis

SM: I arrived at Magnum as the same time as Joan Bush. I did a bit of everything.

JM: When we got married Chim chose the restaurant, Le Vert Bocageat La Tour-Maubourg, across from the Invalides, in October 1950.

SM: Henri and George traveled a lot. I saw George come back after his wife’s death. Henri came back from Asia with a broken leg. I would go back and forth between Rue du Faubourg St Honoré and rue de Lisbonne.

JM: I saw George’s photographs at Picto rue de la Comète and I was very impressed. Chim was a very good technician because of his formative years in Germany.

SM: I was the one opening the door at Magnum but I do not remember having seen Chim come in. He just materialized one day. All of a sudden he was there. We called him the Professor, he had a serious air but his eyes were a bit ironic behind the glasses and his smile was enigmatic. He impressed me because I was only 23 years old.

“He is the one who taught me editing. He was interested in both the composition and the technical aspect of photography. He taught me how to tell a story in pictures. He let me choose and then he looked and made suggestions but he never imposed. Contrary to Henri it was about story-telling rather than aesthetics. I never saw him irritated or angry. In meetings, he tried to be persuasive. Sometimes he would get a little more heated with Bob when it was necessary.

“I never saw him dressed “casual.” He had gray suits and black ties. I think that he had a steady girlfriend but I never met her.

JM: Once I had gone photographing in Malta and I went to see Chim in Rome at the Inghilterra. He took me to a restaurant that stayed open late at night. We discussed photography. I had made a reportage for the OTAN (NATO) because Krys Taconis was not available. Chim asked me how it went. He was very attentive with young photographers, as Henri was with Marc [Riboud].

SM: We had a very friendly relationship. He was very accessible work wise but not personally. He did not let on anything about his personal life. There was a distance and he wanted to keep it that way. He was in his little cocoon.

“He accepted cropping of his pictures when it was necessary, especially with the Rolleiflex.

“When he was in Paris he came to the office everyday.

JM: He had a very soft voice and a certain preciosity in his way of expressing himself. His gaze was very expressive. It was like an interior laugh, not nasty. He was not aggressive but his remarks could be very pointed. Bob paid a lot of attention to his remarks and would frequently ask his opinion.

JM: I prefer the word “elegance” to preciosity. When I did the reportage on the shooting of French Cancan, Jean Renoir had told me about Chim.The reportage had been Bob’s idea.

SM: Chim was often with Bob at the Bar des Théâtres, across from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.Bob had a small room at the Hotel Montaigne. Chim and him had breakfast and also lunch there. All the Dior models came by but I never saw him go after a model. At some point, he had an apartment on rue du Faubourg St Honoré.

“He had an intuition about possible successes, such as when he photographed La Callas and Sophiia Loren in their débuts.

“His shoes were probably Italian shoes. You could not imagine him with unpolished shoes.

“Chim was at our wedding and he had lunch with us. He is the one who settled the bill.

We often went to lunch Chez Isidorewith Bob and him. It was rue d’Artois, near the Blue Note, a good restaurant and not cheap. We also went to the Trocadero, avenue Georges Mandel, I don’t remember the name of the restaurant. The patronnewas a stout lady. There was a terrace and it was very pleasant in the summer.

One word sums Chim up: “distinction.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Rambouillet, May 11, 2005

Jean Marquis was a photographer distributed by Magnum Paris; Suzie worked as an editor at Magnum in 1949-1951.

Lucy Frucht

“I came to America in 1942 and Leco was my first job. There were three people who worked at Leco. I did a little of everything. We alternated tasks so we wouldn’t always do the same thing. Leco was quite well known.

“Chim was very personable, très bien. But one day he was, ah ma chérie, everything wonderful, the next he was grumpy.

“Chim was short, a bit stout, very amusing and very nice. He always had things to say. Sometimes he talked a lot, mostly about himself but we didn’t mind, and other times he was perfectly serious and did not talk at all. We liked him well enough.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, Riverdale, June 22, 2005

Lucy Frucht was Chim’s secretary at Leco in New York in the early 1940s

Joan Bush

“I had volunteered in the Air Force but got tuberculosis and got invalided out with a full pension. I started out at Life where I was interviews by Elizabeth Crocket and hired as an editorial assistant doing captions. I was there at the time of the invasion that Capa covered.

“In 1946, I was working in Switzerland and inquired about job openings in Paris. There was a vacancy at the Magnum Paris office. A photographer took me out for a black market meal. Then I met Maria Eisner and she wanted me to run the Magnum office so I got the job. In 1948, I worked a lot editing Cartier-Bresson. I literally was head cook and bottle washer. Kessel and Capa would come in the morning arguing about their poker games. I had learnt French at school but I wasn’t very good but my French improved with them. I lived in Neuilly and shared the apartment with an English girl.

“After wartime London, it was something to be in Paris! The office was first rue St Honoré in Maria Eisner’s old apartment, then we moved to 125 rue du Faubourg St Honoré. The café downstairs was where they played pinball, Capa and Chim. A whole lot of business was conducted down there. Paris Match had just started with editor Hervé Mille.

“Chim was very renferméand I did not know anything about his private life. He had a sort of gnome-like face, balding, with glasses and a little bit hunched over. He always had a suit. In these days, people did not dress down.

“When I worked at Magnum in 1948-50 there was Inge Morath who came into the office to help. She was just starting as a photographer. I’ll always remember when she first arrived with Ernst Haas, wearing a blue dress with a simple cut, a matching hat, like an English schoolgirl. I edited a lot of Henri’s pictures but never met him, he was always traveling in the Far East. It seems to me that I was always in a rush and bringing stuff over to Pierre Gassmann on the left bank.

“I have been editing Chim’s pictures on Children of Europe but I have no memory of it.

“I was also doing stories with Carl Perutz for This Week magazine, doing fashions and balls. Art Buchwald’s wife worked for Balmain and borrowed dresses for me, one in good heavy satin, oyster-colored. Perutz with his size 15 shoes was always treading on my train. I was holding a flashbulb for the photographs.

“Chim never brought a girlfriend into the office. He rarely took his jacket off except in the meetings. He always held a cigarette between thumb and index. He had a short-sleeved white shirt but still kept his tie on even on a hot day.

“I remember a day in the summer of 1949 when we went to Rambouillet for the day for a lunch outdoors. Capa and Kessel played poker but Chim did not come on the outing.

“He wore corrective sunglasses. He was always very kind, very polite. One time he took a photograph of me jumping off the desk.

“I remember going down to Rome to join him and we went out to dinner in a good restaurant. I don’t remember what he talked about.

“I was very fond of him and was devastated when I heard the news of his death. But I did not know him intimately. He and Capa were complete opposites. They were complementary and liked each other. But Chim was keeping himself to himself.

“Chim was not like Cartier-Bresson, he let us crop his pictures. I think that he worked a lot by himself on the children material.

“Once he made a comment to me that touched me. It was after I had left Magnum.  I was working for WHO and went to see people at Magnum. He walked in and said ‘You ‘ve grown up, you are a young woman now’. This is the most personal remark he ever made to me.

“When I left Magnum I worked 1952 to 1954 for Picture Post then was an assistant editor for Women’s Own magazine.”

Interview by Carole Naggar, May 9, 2005

Joan Bush was a picture editor at Magnum Paris in the late 1940s.

Jinx Rodger

“In those far-off halcyon days when I was one of those ambitious young ladies Magnum hired to work long hours for very little pay in an over-crowded chaotic office, timetables and routine did not exist. Photographers draped in cameras and tripods burst in and out demanding attention, cash and film, or lounged around catching up with the latest news and gossip.   If serious problems arose, they were discussed over coffee and wine in the bistro downstairs, often next to the noisy pinball machine commandeered by Capa.

“Except  when Chim arrived.  We called him the wise old owl.  Wise —because he was; Owl because he never seemed to sleep.   Although small in size, Chim was big in style, in his elegantly tailored suits and well polished  shoes.  His presence sent an immediate aura of confidence and dignity into our midst. He took all situations calmly, and strived to bring order and control over the erratic running of the office.

“Our beloved owl came into his own at night.  An impeccable gourmet, Chim knew the best places to eat in Paris, not the most expensive nor beloved by tourists, but ones he had nosed out himself in his quest for fine food.  Fortunate friends remember so well a little suggestion at the end of a long long day: “I know a little place where we could eat together tonight.”

“Chim’s personal world was a bit of a mystery.  He had many friends in high places, politicians, writers, film stars. He had a pied -à -terre in Rome, and several girlfriends we never met.  His voice was gentle, his smile a little sad. Dapper but dignified, we were all his best friend, and that big generous heart I’m sure gave Chim the ability to make so many intimate and beautiful photographs.

Jinx Rodger, the widow of photographer George Rodger, is a researcher, editor, and curator. They traveled together and she wrote texts for his picture stories in the 1950s.