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Erich Salomon

 

(born April 28, 1886, Berlin, Ger. — died July 7, 1944, Auschwitz, Pol.) German photographer. He studied law at the University of Munich but soon abandoned his practice to pioneer in photojournalism. He specialized in photographing heads of state in unguarded moments at international conferences and social gatherings. His purpose was to show the human qualities of world leaders, who up to that time had been stereotyped in stiff formal portraits. In May 1944 he was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he died.

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Art Encyclopedia: Erich Salomon
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(b Berlin, 28 April 1886; d Auschwitz, 7 July 1944). German photographer. He studied zoology and engineering in Berlin from 1906 to 1909, and then law. In World War I Salomon entered military service and was taken as a prisoner of war in France. He began working in the advertising department of the Ullstein publishing house in 1923 and as a result came into contact with photography, which he began practising in 1927. Until 1933 he worked mainly as a freelance photographer for Ullstein, the Berliner illustrierte Zeitung, the M?nchner illustrierte Presse, Fortune, Life and the Daily Telegraph.

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Photography Encyclopedia: Erich Salomon
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Salomon, Erich (1886-1944?), German photojournalist and ‘father of candid photography’. Salomon was born into a bourgeois Berlin family that suffered heavily in the German hyper-inflation. After various jobs in the 1920s, he became publicity manager for Ullstein Verlag, publishers of the Berliner illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ). Having experimented with an Ermanox camera, capable of taking pictures in low light, he took a chance on working as a photographer for the BIZ. Seeing himself as a kind of contemporary historian, and exploiting his social contacts, he captured unposed images of political and cultural celebrities. Typical was Reception in Berlin (1931), showing Albert Einstein engaged in animated conversation with Ramsay MacDonald, surrounded by a group of luminaries including the Nobel Prize-winner Max Planck, smoking cigars and sipping cognac.

Salomon would put his subjects at ease by his urbanity and ability to converse on almost any topic (and in any of seven languages). It was the London Graphic that coined the ‘candid’ epithet, following Aristide Briand's 1930 quip that unless a ministerial meeting were documented by Salomon no one would believe it had happened. In the mid-1930s he took his family to Holland, where he worked for Dutch newspapers and magazines. Following the Occupation, they were deported to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz, where Salomon perished with his wife (Maggy Schuler) and younger son (Dirk), probably in 1944.

— Amanda Hopkinson

Bibliography

  • Vries, H. de, Erich Salomon: Portrait of an Age (Eng. edn. 1966).
  • Erich Salomon, introd. Peter Hunter (1978)
Wikipedia: Erich Salomon
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Erich Salomon (April 28, 1886July 7, 1944) was a German-born news photographer known for his pictures in the diplomatic and legal professions and the innovative methods he used to acquire them.

Born in Berlin, Salomon studied law, engineering, and zoology up to World War I. After the war, he worked in the promotion department of the Ullstein publishing empire designing their billboard ads. He first picked up a camera in 1927, when he was 41, to document some legal disputes and soon after hid an Ermanox camera usable in dim light in his bowler hat. By cutting a hole in the hat for the lens, Salomon snapped a photo of a police killer on trial in a Berlin criminal court.

With his multilingual ability and clever concealment, Salomon's reputation soared among the peoples of Europe. When the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in 1928, Salomon walked into the signing room and took the vacant seat of the Polish delegate as well as several photos. In time, diplomats were convinced that photojournalism was part of the historical record, and the photo opportunity was born.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Salomon fled to the Netherlands with his wife and continued his photographic career at the Hague. Salomon refused an invitation by Life Magazine to come to the United States, and he and his family were trapped in the Low Countries after Hitler invaded in 1940. Salomon and his family spent longer time in Westerbork transit camp, almost five months in the Theresienstadt, and were deported from here to the Theresienstadt Family Camp in May 1944. He died in Auschwitz in July 1944.

Solomon is also one of only two known persons to have photographed a session of the U.S. Supreme Court.[1]

There is a prestigious Dr. Erich Salomon Prize that is a 'lifetime achievement' award for photojournalists given by the German Society of Photography (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fotografie).

Photos by Salomon

  • Summit Conference (1928; depicts foreign ministers of France, Germany, Britain, Poland, Japan, and Italy just before they signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact)

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Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
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