David "chim" seymour fut l'un des fondateurs de la célèbre
agence Magnum avec
Robert Capa . Il
est envoyé en Espagne en juin 1936 pour Life Magazine, où il doit
transcrire sur photos les évènement décisifs qui s'y déroulent.
A l'image de Robert Capa, David Seymour savait utiliser l'art de la photographie
pour dépeindre la violence et l'atrocité des conflits et la misère
de la population civile. Il y prît de nombreuses photos, dont celle montrant
une
femme alletant son enfant
sous les bombardements franquistes, mais l'espagne ne fût qu'un passage
pour un photographe antimilitariste.
" We had been friends since 1933. The precision of his critical spirit
had rapidly become indispensible to those around him. Photography to him was
a pawn that he moved all over the chessboard of his intelligence. One of his
pawns kept in reserve was his culinary delicacy, which he handled with gentle
authority, always ordering good wines and elaborate dishes. He had one area
of personal elegance: his black silk ties. His perspicacity, his very delicacy,
often gave him a sad, even disabused smile, which brightened if one humored
him. He gave and demanded much human warmth. He had so many friends everywhere;
he was a born godfather. When I went to announce his death to his friend Dave
Schoenbrun, he said to me in the conversation that followed: "You 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 forgot to make them communicate." He accepted the
servitudes of his profession, and turned out to be break in situations that
seemed utterly foreign to his personality. Chim picked up his camera the way
a doctor takes his stethescope out of his bag, applying his diagnosis to the
condition of the heart. His own was vulnerable".
Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1996
"Our Special Correspondent Chim" was sent to Spain by Regards to report on crucial
issues there. He found that the problems of Spain were unique to that country,
shaped by its own history and tradition. He also found the country divided and
passionate in its differences. Land distribution was one of the most pressing
problems on the agenda of the Spanish Popular Front. Especially in the south
and southwest, absentees owned almost all the land. There, the landless farmers
were virtually indentured. Chim traveled to the impoverished province of Estremadura,
where sixty thousand peasants had occupied fallow lands. In July 1936, when
the officer corps instituted a widespread coup, the elected government immediately
appealed for help to its brother Front Populaire under Leon Blum. But France
was allied with England, whose leaders feared intervention would provoke yet
another world conflagration. Against his better judgment, Leon Blum joined England
in a non-intervention pact. As head of the insurgents who had engineered the
coup against the Spanish government, Colonel Francisco Franco immediately appealed
to fascist Germany and Italy for help. They sent massive supplies of troops
and materials. The Soviet Union feigned neutrality, but sent experienced soldiers
and, in exchange for Spanish gold, outdated military equipment. The Republican
forces were made up of the general population of agricultural and urban workers.
Untrained as soldiers, they did their best with World War I guns and rifles,
and whatever the government was able to buy from arms smugglers in Paris. Enthusiasm
for the cause was the only commodity running high. Idealistic young men from
many countries traveled to Spain to fight in the International Brigades. Chim
returned to Spain in August 1936, a month after the outbreak of war, and proceeded
to the front in the foothills near the Spanish city of Irun, where he immediately
saw action. Andre, now bylined Robert Capa, and his photographer girlfriend,
Gerta Taro, had arrived in Spain and were photographing where the action was
hottest. Chim was now obliged to wear glasses, which made him vulnerable, even
useless, in action. He therefore concentrated on exclusive stories telling the
world about the defenses that backed up the Republican cause. Together, they
formed a perfect team: what Capa and Taro contributed in passion at the front,
Chim made up in thoughtfulness and compassion behind the scenes. On highly secret
missions, which required both trustworthiness and discretion, Chim photographed
munitions and aircraft factories. He photographed parts of Republican Spain
not yet under fire, but strategically important and bound to be attacked soon,
as indeed they were: vital Catalan factories, Basque fishing boats, Basque soldiers
enjoying moral support from monks at the Monastery of Amorabita and attending
an outdoor mass before going into battle, and priests providing the rites of
burial within the church. When Chim returned to Asturias, to the much admired
miners he had visited before the war, Regards headlines announced "World Wide
Scoop, Sensational Photographs! CHIM with the miners in the trenches under Oviedo."
Capa was in Paris when news came that Gerta Taro had been accidentally killed
in Spain. She was twenty-six years old. The sympathetic press, which was attended
by thousands, turned her funeral into a political event. This time the cause
was solidarity with Republican Spain. Chim was now well aware of the divisiveness
among Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and Trotskyites who made up the Republican
forces. On the insurgent's side, German and Italian troops, with their advanced
weapons and many airplanes, had reduced the chances of victory for Republican
Spain. Barcelona was bombed regularly. Chim's essay on that city appeared in
LIFE Magazine in New York. After the retreat on the Ebro river in December,
1938, Nationalist forces pressed on into Catalonia. Citizens and soldiers now
fled toward France. By mid-May the war was over; Republican Spain was defeated.
It was the end of an era, not only for Chim, but for all Europeans, and Americans,
though they did not know it yet the end of Europe's noble effort to become a
continent of democracies. Chim was now twenty-eight years old. The five years
in France and Spain had been his formative years, not only as a photographer,
but emotionally and intellectually. Chim was now a thoroughly seasoned photojournalist.
Twenty- five of his stories on Spain had been published in Regards. Far from
his editors in Paris, he had had the opportunity to pick his own story ideas
and provide the necessary text for them. -
Inge Bondi
© 1996, Inge Bondi from CHIM: The Photographs of David Seymour, Bulfinch Press/Little,
Brown and Company ©1996 from the Estate of David Seymour
