Éric Schwab

A major figure of photojournalism at AFP, Éric Schwab is best known for having been one of the first to document the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. But his work is far from limited to that dramatic period of history. After the Liberation, Éric Schwab left France for New York, where his American work took on a lighter, even glamorous tone, particularly in the cabarets, where he enjoyed photographing dancers and jazz musicians… He then joined several United Nations agencies, building a humanist body of photographic work there. Over the 15 years he devoted to this, he travelled the world – Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Trinidad, Haiti – producing thousands of striking photographs: schools for UNESCO, clinics for the WHO, factories for the International Labour Office. “All the usual misery that I cannot get used to,” he wrote in one of his rare logbooks.

The result of an exceptional partnership between Agence France-Presse and Cercle d’Art, this book is published on the occasion of the monographic exhibition devoted to the photographer at UNESCO. It aims to shed light on the multifaceted work of a figure who has for too long gone under the radar in the history of photography.

Text in English and French.