Chim: A Vivid Retrospective of Europe

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History’s fickle nature has given Chim and George Rodger a back seat to their more celebrated colleagues and co-founders of Magnum Photos, Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Capa, charismatic and brave, defined modern war photography. He was the lover of Ingrid Bergman and the confidant of Hemingway and Picasso. He nursed a lifelong ache for Gerda Taro, his fianceé killed during the Spanish Civil War. Cartier-Bresson first defined the limits of 35-millimeter film, then created a body of work in it that could perhaps be equaled, but never surpassed.

Chim â€" born Dawid Syzmin and later known as David Seymour â€" was a quiet ph! otographer, the type who never seems to get his artistic due, but who remains an indispensable part of history. He documented moments that slipped somewhere between the iconic and the commonplace, made vivid by their unexpected familiarity.

A testament to his range â€" both geographic and artistic â€" will be on display in “We Went Back,” a retrospective exhibit that opens Friday at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. Featuring more than 120 vintage prints, contact sheets and ephemera, the show aims to place him in his rightful context.

“Chim was an astute observer of 20th century European political affairs, workers’ rights, and culture,” reads a description of the show, “from the beginnings of the antifascist struggle to the rebuilding of countries ravaged by World War II.”

David Seymour/Magnum Photos Prostitute standing near the partly destroyed Krupp factory. Essen, Germany, 1947.

In one image, a prostitute poses defiantly in the ruins of a German factory after World War II (above). In another, a haunted-looking man displays an image of himself as a young, confident Nazi officer (below). As old alliances crumbled, Chim photographed a beach on the border between East and West Germany guarded by a stern soldier and a German shepherd.

These pictures are not conventionally dramatic, but they reveal one of our defining but rarely spoken qualities: we easily adapt to war. Indeed, we are almost comfortable with it. Until a certain point â€" but of course by then it’s too late.

Chim is perhaps best known for his photographs of children. Many photojournalists tend to see children as victims or props in photographs. Ch! im treate! d them with reverence and respect â€" even a rare love and empathy â€" but the children are often in ominous surroundings. In his pictures, the world created for them by adults is often a violent one.

Some may see sentimentality, but I see a longing for an innocence that won’t be restored, or perhaps an acknowledgment that those exposed to violence will often sustain it.

Although his pictures often mix hope with despair, an image of a deranged young girl at a blackboard drawing her idea of “home” will endure as one of the most damning pictures of war (Slide 10).

David Seymour/Magnum Photos A former Nazi general, Otto-Ernst Remer, who played a vital role in stopping the July 20, 1944, plot against Adolf Hitler, holding a portrait of himself as a young officer. German, 1949.

In his pictures of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and the founding of Israel, Chim sometimes seemed to put activism ahead of journalism. Still, he was no propagandist. One of his last pictures was taken in Egypt during the 1956 war with Israel, showing a mother carrying her baby rushing through a destroyed neighborhood. There are fear, anger and strength in her face. The image could have been made in any era, in any country at war.

Chim’s pictures are often appreciative of humanity’s resilience. No doubt that is also part of the sadness of these images as well.

And 56 years since Chim died, his photographs show the kind of man he was. For that, we all gain something.

Peter van Agtmael, a Magnum associate, has been photographing the United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006. Last year he won the W. Eugene S! mith Gran! t for Humanistic Photography, which he will use to document the effects of the conflicts on Afghans and Iraqis. On March 8 he will lead a walk-through of the exhibit, which is on view through May 5.

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