LESSING, Erich

About the Austrian Magnum photographer Erich LESSING (1923-2018).

Erich LESSING still managed to escape to Palestine in 1939, while his family remained in Vienna and was murdered. He learned radio engineering and worked in a kibbutz and in a wide variety of professions. Eventually he turned his boyhood hobby into a profession and began working as a photographer, which eventually led him to the British Army. After returning to Austria in 1947, he met his first wife and they became Associated Press photo reporters. From 1951 he was a member of the Magnum photographic agency. He also photographed for other magazines, such as Life and Paris Match magazines; his main activity was in Eastern Europe. In 1956 he photographed the uprising in Budapest, but he also photographed numerous notable personalities, such as Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. In addition, he was a reportage photographer of famous motion pictures such as 'The Sound of Music', 'Alexis Zorba' and the literary adaptation 'Moby Dick' by John Huston. In the summer of 2013 he donated his archive of over 60,000 photos to the Austrian National Library. Erich LESSING died in Vienna on August 29, 2018 at the age of 95.

Photo books by and about the work of Erich LESSING (a selection)

• 'The Odyssey' (1965); 'The Spanish Riding School in Vienna' (1972); 'Arik Brauer. Bunte Mauer' (1975); 'Fifty Years of Photography' (1995); 'Arresting Time. Reportage Photography, 1948-1973' (2002, 2005); 'Budapest 1956. The Hungarian Revolution' (2006); 'Rainer Bischof: Herbert von Karajan' (2008); 'Magnum's First' (2008, 2017, together with works by Robert CAPA, Marc RIBOUD, Werner BISCHOF, Henri CARTIER-BRESSON, Ernst HAAS, Jean MARQUIS as well as by Inge MORATH); 'Menschenbilder aus der Dunkelkammer' (2010); 'Österreich nach 1945' (2014); 'Andeswo' (Elsewhere, 2014).
  

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