Remembering My Uncle Chim

Ben Shneiderman

Chim was my kind caring uncle, who brought gifts of books and took photos of me and my family. My mother, Eileen Shneiderman, was his older sister, and she loved him dearly. Chim’s untimely death at age 45 during the Suez Crisis in 1956 was a tragic event in our home that as a 9-year old I remember well. My mother devoted her life to her brother’s legacy, helping with the founding of ICP, and promoting his work wherever possible, until she died at age 96, just two years ago.

With my sister, I have had the privilege, responsibility, and pleasure of taking care of Chim’s archives, working with Magnum, and donating his vintage prints to ICP and other major museums that exhibit his work. It is inspiring to see how much the Magnum community treasures their founders and satisfying to find museum curators and photo scholars who are eager to become part of Chim’s still growing family of admirers.

Chim’s work is special because of his unique gentle personality. He had a remarkable capacity to engage with his subjects and make them partners in telling their story. If you look at many of Chim’s photos and ask yourself what happened in the 2 minutes before the photo you will repeatedly discover that there must have been a bond of friendship and a relationship of trust. This style occasionally occurs in the work of Chim’s close colleagues Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert Capa, but one of Magnum’s strengths was the diversity of its founders. Henri wanted to be invisible, and Capa was devoted to being close enough to capture the action.

© David Seymour/Magnum Photos

Chim’s style was to get close enough emotionally, a style the resonates through the work of Susan Meiselas and other Magnum photographers.

Michael Kimmelman enthusiastically reviewed the 1996 ICP exhibit in the New York Times with these words:

"Chim was a dreamer, and along with Capa and Cartier-Bresson, one of the heroic and pioneering liberal photojournalists who thought he could actually improve the world by showing people what was going on in it."

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