Erich Salomon

Born in Berlin in 1886, the lawyer and gentleman Erich Salomon, managed to gain entry to legal processes and, above all, conferences with leading statesmen, as a photojournalist. He moved confidently and, at the same, inconspicuously, within this part of society and could, almost on an equal level, document their proceedings, barterings and haggling from a close distance.  He did this soundlessly, through his eloquent photographs.  Solomon visualized the daily events of a dramatic era, which it seemed so inevitably had to end in catastrophe, as they sealed his own fate as a Jew. In anticipation, Solomon emigrated to the Netherlands in 1933, where he was later denounced during the German occupation and murdered along with his wife and youngest son in Auschwitz. However, his photographs set standards beyond his death. His pictures alone, of over-tired and sleeping politicians taken after nightly sessions, have a non-defamatory elegance. They preserve a respectful ethos, exemplary for many serious photojournalists of the next generation. In his honor, the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize has been awarded by the German Photographic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie) since 1971, as an award particularly for serious photojournalism.