Stamp - Eric Schwab (1910-1977)

Born in Hamburg in 1910 to a French father and a German mother, Eric Schwab spent his childhood between Germany, Switzerland and France. Drawn to photography, he became an assistant in 1928 and set photographer in 1929, before working from 1931 to 1937 for the women's press (Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair...). In 1939, he published his first report on Romania for Vu and Life. Mobilized in September of the same year, he became a correspondent for AFP in October 1944. Thanks to his accreditation with the American army, he was able to report on the war in Belgium and Germany. Early in 1945, he met American journalist and writer Meyer Levin, with whom he teamed up. They were among the first reporters to discover the Nazi camps and report their horrors to the press. "Meyer Levin was in search of what remained of Jewish communities," explains Annette Wieviorka in 1945. La Découverte (ed. Seuil, 2015), and Eric Schwab is trying to find his mother, deported to a camp as a Jew. His photos of the concentration camps were distributed internationally, and were soon exhibited in both the United States and France. After the Liberation, the photographer left France and settled in New York in 1946, where he continued to work as a correspondent for AFP until the early 1950s. He then worked for various international organizations (UN, UNESCO, WHO, FAO, ILO, etc.), focusing on the plight of refugees. Two of his images were selected for the exhibition The Family of Man, organized by Edward Steichen and presented in New York in 1955, before travelling around the world. Alongside his commissioned work, he also carried out a number of personal projects, such as Vanishing Paris, on the transformations of the capital. His death in 1977 prevented him from completing this project.

Mise en page Valérie Besser © photo Schwab