David Szymin was born in 1911 in Warsaw. After studying at the Sorbonne in the 1930s, Szymin stayed on in Paris. From 1936 to 1938 he photographed the Spanish Civil War. On the outbreak of World War II he moved to New York, where he adopted the name David Seymour. To his friends, however, he was always known by his nickname, “Chim.” In 1947, along with Cartier-Bresson, Capa, George Rodger and William Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos. In 1956, when traveling near the Suez Canal to cover a prisoner exchange, he was killed by Egyptian gunfire.