Swiss President Max Petitpierre and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Geneva, Switzerland , 1955

Erich Lessing

Renowned Austrian photographer Erich Lessing has died at the age of 95, on Wednesday, August 29. During the course of his career, Erich Lessing covered many significant political and social events. His photographs illustrated the atmosphere of post-war Europe, from the Allied occupation of Vienna, to the reconstruction of war-ravaged Germany, as well as the realities of life under communist rule in Eastern Europe, Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Algeria in 1958, and the dramatic events of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. “I never thought of myself as doing anything other than telling stories,” said Lessing. “The camera became the medium through which I did that, but I don’t carry a camera everywhere I go. To me, it is simply the means to a very specific end. I observe the world through my eyes and not through the viewfinder of a camera. I don’t interpret, nor do I adjust anything in the dark room. I am a realistic photographer.” Erich Lessing was born in Vienna in 1923, the son of a dentist and a concert pianist. His father died of cancer in 1933, and although sixteen-year-old Lessing escaped to Palestine in 1939, his mother and grandmother were murdered in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Lessing studied radio engineering at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and worked as a taxi driver and a carp breeder in a kibbutz. However, he eventually found his way back to the hobby of his youth, photography. He started out as a kindergarten and beach photographer before joining the British 6th Airborne Division. Returning to Austria in 1947, Lessing was hired as a photojournalist for the American news agency Associated Press. In 1951, Magnum co-founder David ‘Chim’ Seymour invited Lessing to join Magnum Photos.