illustrated magazines. In his first four years as a
professional, he counted several dozen features to
his credit, most of them published in theBerliner
Illustrirte Zeitung,Mu ̈nchner Illustrierte Presse,The
Graphic,L’Illustration, andVuin Paris, andFortune
magazine in New York. In all, the German press
gave Salomon about 250 features and the foreign
press another 80.
Salomon’s most famous images were those of poli-
ticians and diplomats at work during crucial meet-
ings of the League of Nations, and later reparations
and disarmament conferences in The Hague, as well
as social gatherings and official banquets for heads
of state. He typically waited for a gesture, like a yawn
or the lighting of a cigarette, before using a cable
release to trigger his camera’s shutter. The method
enabled him to capture something wholly human in
Europe’s elite. In the absence of the old imperial
spectacles typical of pre-war periodicals, the middle
classes found Salomon’s candid camera a comforting
substitute. His were the images of a liberal Europe
struggling and ultimately failing to emerge after years
of devastating war. At times, the images seemed to
present an old regime fatigued and ineffectual, but
Salomon’s ability to capture those moments in
between the formal proceedings of the historical
record, like a preoccupied British Foreign Minister
Chamberlain balancing a long ash atop his cigar or
the Reichstag Deputy Eisenberg exhausted and
asleep in a lobby chair, were also testimonials to the
sincere effort being made by flawed people. Several
diplomats recognized the service Salomon provided
with his sometime embarrassing photographs. No
summit could be organized without Dr. Salomon,
they quipped, for ‘‘people may then believe that this
is a conference of no importance.’’
Salomon specialized in hard-to-get photographs. He
was expert at evading security, and he snuck his cam-
era into numerous social and political functions using
hats, diplomatic pouches, even an arm sling to disguise
his gear. He photographed Britain’s High Court ille-
gally and triggered his Ermanox within an attache ́case
to take potentially the only photograph of the U. S.
Supreme Court in session. Salomon’s rare photo-
graphs also included many European artists and intel-
lectuals. His technical inventiveness helped him secure
unique images of Pablo Casals, Igor Stravinsky, and
Arturo Toscanini during performances by sitting in
the orchestra with noiseless cameras rigged on a mod-
ified tripod. Despite the fast shutter speeds, Salomon’s
images inevitably carry streaks of motion that make
them dynamic and tangibly immediate.
In 1933, Salomon fled Germany and eventually
settled with his family in an apartment in The
Hague. He continued to work from there, mainly
for Dutch publications and London’sDaily Tele-
graph, though his pictures continued to be pub-
lished worldwide. In 1940, he was trapped by the
Nazi occupation and three years later was forced to
go underground, his apartment sealed by the Nazis.
When he returned in 1944, he was betrayed and
ultimately he, his wife, and younger son Dirk, were
sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed months
before the camp’s liberation. His elder son, Peter,
who had been sent to England before the war, later
managed to reassemble his father’s disparate arc-
hive. Salomon had been wise enough to hide plates
and negatives in various locations, including under
a friend’s chicken coop and in the archives of the
Dutch Parliament. Several shows in the 1950s
rekindled interest in Salomon’s work and revealed
lost material. The effort culminated in the publica-
tion of Salomon’s best work inPortrait of an Age.
KevinS. Reilly
Seealso:History of Photography: Interwar Years;
Photography in Germany and AustriaBiography
Born in Berlin, 28 April 1886. University of Munich, Doc-
torate of Law, 1913. Drafted into German Army; in
French POW camps, 1914 to 1918. Various jobs before
c. 1925 when hired at Ullstein Verlag, Berlin in sales.
Sold first ‘‘candid’’ Ermanox pictures toBerliner Illu-
strirte Zeitung, 1928. International travel (England,
France, United States, Netherlands) and publication in
various illustrated magazines while based in Berlin,
1928–1932. Escaped Nazi Germany, 1933; established
family and photography lab in his apartment in The
Hague, 1935; Nuremberg Laws forced Salomon under-
ground in Netherlands, 1943; captured by Nazis, 1944.
Died in Auschwitz, Poland, 7 July 1944.Individual Exhibitions
1935 Royal Photographic Society, London
1937 Ilford Galleries, London
1956 Photokina, Cologne, Germany
Town Hall Berlin-Scho ̈neberg, Berlin
1957 Museum fu ̈r Kunst und Gewerbe(Museum of Arts and
Crafts), Hamburg
Royal Photographic Society, London
University (Prentenkabinet), Leiden
Landesgewerbemuseum (Provincial Crafts Museum),
Stuttgart, Germany
1958 George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
Time–Life Building, New York
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. and traveling
1974 Unguarded Moments, Fotografiska Museet, Stock-
holm, Sweden
1976 La Photo Galerie, Paris
1978 Landesbildestelle, Berlin
1984 Erich Salomon, 1866–1944: de la vie d’un photographe,
Bibliothe`que royale, Bruxelles, BelgiumSALOMON, ERICH