"Famous Contemporaries in Unguarded Moments", Erich Salomon (1886-1944)

A small debate in the Chamber of Deputies.

Informal Studies en Route for England, 1931. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Image courtesy of MoMA.

Evening Party in the Hotel Excelsior in Rome
August, 1931. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Image courtesy of MoMA.

Boat crossing of French Prime Minister Pierre Laval (center, with hat) to London for conference, Calais. Image courtesy of ICP.

The Fifth Cabinet of Colijn, The Hague. Image courtesy of ICP.

Ways and Means Committee - listening to a speaker (Congressmen Doughten, Rainey, Crisp and Collier), Washington, 1931.

Arturo Toscanini and wife taking a walk in The Hague, Holland. Image courtesy of ICP.

The High Court, London, 1929: Justice Avory (left) and Lord Hewart (right) with court clerks. Lord Hewart allowed publication after Avory’s death despite photography being illegal in court.

President Herbert Hoover as guest of honor at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, March, 1932. The camera was less than three feet away, hidden in a flowerpot and triggered by a remote-control cable.

The Observation Gallery in the League of Nations
1928. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Image courtesy of MoMA.

Evening party at the Hotel Excelsior, Rome: Mussolini, Dr. Brüning, Dr. Curtius, and Dino Grandi. Five detectives tried stopping the photographer.

Second Hague Conference on German Reparations, January 1930, in the morning hours. Image courtesy of NOMA.

French Statesmen Visit Berlin for the First Time Since World War I
1931. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Image courtesy of MoMA.

British diplomats at a Berlin reception, August 1931. From left: Max Planck, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, Albert Einstein, Dr. Dietrich (German Finance Minister), Mr. Schmitz (I.G. Farben), and Dr. Curtius (German Foreign Minister).

Rumanian Foreign Minister Titulescu playing skat, Bournemouth, England. Image courtesy of ICP.

In July 1931, Brüning and Curtius visited Paris. At a Quai d’Orsay banquet, Briand exclaimed upon spotting Salomon, “Ah, le voilà! Le roi des indiscrets.” Pictured: Reynaud, Champetier, Herriot, and Bérard.

Shortly after the first transatlantic phone cable was installed, Marlene Dietrich spoke to her daughter in Berlin from Hollywood at 4 A.M. She later reenacted the call for Salomon’s camera.

Books

Portrait of an Age

(Collier Books, 1975)

Erich Salomon Retrospektive

(Schirmer/Mosel, 2004)

Erich Salomon

(Aperture, 1978)

Das Ideale Parlament. Erich Salomon as Photographer in Berlin and The Hague, 1928-1940

(Droste Verlag, 1970)

Related Projects

Trastevere, Rome, 1959. Image courtesy of Magnum Photos.

The Europeans

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)

European identity captured through black-and-white photographs spanning five decades, emphasizing shared humanity and cultural diversity.

Behind the Saint-Lazare station, Paris, 1932. Image courtesy of Magnum Photos.

The Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)

Ephemeral human moments portrayed through a fusion of spontaneity and precise composition.

On Reading

André Kertész (1894-1985)

Reading as a timeless act that links people through moments of quiet reflection.

Where Children Sleep

James Mollison (1973)

Typological project examining childhood across the world through uniform portraiture and contextual images of sleeping environments.

Sweet Life

Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990)

Emotionally raw photographic journey that captures a world in flux, blending joy and struggle through high-contrast, dynamic images taken during a 14-month global voyage.

Sunday morning is the only time these cuties get a chance to get cleaned up... Image courtesy of ICP.

Naked City

Weegee (1899-1968)

Nighttime scenes of 1930s-1940s New York, portraying urban extremes of crime and social life through high-contrast flash photography and candid depictions of human emotion.