5. David Seymour (Chim)
Sometimes known as Chim, David Seymour was born in Warsaw but moved to Paris where he became enthralled with photography during his studies. He is well known for his perceptive eye and caustic personality. In 1933 he landed his first job as a freelance journalist and from there his career took off. He was able to capture moments during the Spanish Civil War as well as during unrest in Czechoslovakia. In 1939 he took photographs of Loyalist Spanish refugees who journeyed to Mexico. When WWII began, Seymour was in New York but enlisted in the army in 1940 where he worked as a photo interpreter in Europe. In 1942 his parents were killed by Nazis, which lead him to help UNICEF document the plight of refugees, especially children.
Even though he was well known for his war photographs of orphans, he later got into photographing celebrities. While covering the 1956 Suez War, Seymour and fellow photographer Jean Roy were killed by machine-gun fire.
4. Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an American photojournalist who heavily covered life during the Great Depression. She first learned about photography in New York City and got the chance to apprentice at various New York photography studios. In 1918 she moved to San Francisco where she opened a portrait studio. Once the Great Depression began, Langue left her studio and decided to use her camera outside where she captured images of homeless and unemployed people. She later married an agricultural economist in 1935 and the two worked together documenting migrant laborers, sharecropping, and rural poverty. Her photographs caught the eye of many and she was given a job with the Farm Security Administration. In 1941 she earned the Guggenheim Fellowship and went on to cover life for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Today, her photographs are well known all across the world as they show the true side of the Depression and put faces to the dire circumstances and made their plight public. Lange’s photographs and coverage of the era influenced the creation of documentary photography.
3. Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer who is well known for her documentary photography of WWII and the India-Pakistan violence. She earned the first of many titles, including being the first female war correspondent, the first female to work in a combat zone, the first foreign photographer to be granted the right to photograph the Soviet Industry, and the first female to have her photograph grace the cover of Life magazine.
She worked for Fortune magazine from 1929 to 1935 as a staff photographer. In the early 1930s she became known for her photographs of those suffering from the Dust Bowl and she also published a book with the help of her novelist husband which portrayed Southern life during the Depression. She also went to various countries in Europe to photograph life under Nazi rule and Russia life under Communism. Here she was able to capture a photo of a smiling Joseph Stalin. In 1936 Henry Luce, the owner of Life magazine, hired her and put her Fort Peck Dam construction photo on the front cover. She was the on and off staff photographer up until 1945. In 1969 she retired due to her failing health and later died in 1971.
2. Eddie Adams
Like many on this list, Eddie Adams’ name is well-known and attached to one specific photograph. Often referred to as “Saigon, 1968,” Adams said the image haunted him for the rest of his life. Even though he photographed 13 different wars, he is best known for his work that he produced during the Vietnam War. And even though today these pictures are widely known, praised, and analyzed, they were never published in a book before his death in 2004. Many say this is because Adams was a perfectionist, which often slowed down or halted the publishing process.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War and worked as a combat photographer. He was sent there to take pictures of the Demilitarized Zone from one end to the other and he was able to complete the task in just over a month. Adams became widely known when he worked for the Associated Press during the Vietnam War where he took various photographs of Vietnamese refugees attempting to escape in a photo essay that was entitled “The Boat of No Smiles.” Adams pictures greatly changed the American view of the war and even persuaded Jimmy Carter to grant asylum to 200,000 refugees.
1. Robert Frank
Robert Frank was born in Switzerland and ever since his work entitled Les Americains was published, he became a very prominent figure in American photography as well as in film. He was born to a wealthy Jewish family but when Hitler came to power, despite his family being safe in Switzerland, Frank experienced the widespread oppression. To escape the oppression as well as the fact that his family was so involved with business, Frank got into photography and in 1946 he was able to create his first book of photographs entitled 40 Fotos. A year later he moved to the U.S. and worked as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. In 1950 he published a book of photographs he had taken while in Peru and in the same year he participated in the 51 American Photographers held at the Museum of Modern Art. While in the U.S., Frank never liked the American way of life. He saw it as being too fast-paced and too dependent on money, something he tried to escape at home. He referred to the U.S. as being lonely and bleak, a theme that runs through Les Americains. Later on in life he worked as a photojournalist for Fortune, Vogue, and McCall’s.
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