It's interesting to me that a lot of the photos Mr. Salomon took are of the politicians trying to reform Europe after WWI. Maybe it's just me but the opulence around them seems very out of touch with people who were struggling during those times. It makes me wish that things could have turned out differently. I'll just leave it at that.
This hit center, right on target for me. Salomon had Aristide Briand on cam, the colleague and friend of Gustav Stresemann, and he also photographed Julius Curtius, German foreign minister, both a party friend and right-wing opponent to Stresemann. However, all these men struggled to prevent another war. Ten days after Stresemann's death in 1929, the unrecognized prelude to the ultimate catastrophy for Europe, my mother was born to a rich family. Three years later, my father, of poor, most probably half-Jewish descent that he managed to disguise, joined the Nazi party for reasons of sheer nationalism. He and his father hat fought for Germany in WW1. Meanwhile, mother's father, who had also fought for Germany, left conservative thinking and joined the secret resistance against the Nazi regime which just very nearly cost him his life in 1944. Then, after WW2, mother and father met, and they fell in love, the result of which is typing this right now. - Yes, sounds absolutely crazy and chaotic, and yes, it is. And yes, it lead to the murder of Erich Salomon and Yva, and to the exile of Eisenstaedt, Jacobi, and Helmut Newton, too. All of them Ermanox users at some stage of their photography careers, too.
We are also here to tell and preserve these stories, for the sake of understanding, freedom, and peace.
And, I will have to leave it at that, too. Thank you!
