Paul Almasy

Paul Almasy, Nuns in the courtyard, Paris 1952, 60 x 60 cm, silver-gelatin print on baryt-paper
Paul Almasy, Volkswagen factory, Wolfsburg 1954, 60 x 60 cm, silver-gelatin print on baryt-paper
Paul Almasy, Shell gas station in the desert, Algeria 1963, 60 x 60 cm, silver-gelatin print on baryt-paper
Paul Almasy, Brücke, Ishfahan, Iran 1964, 60 x 60 cm, silver-gelatin print on baryt-paper
Paul Almasy, Das Goethehaus am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs, Frankfurt am Main, 1946, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Thank God Always, Nigeria, 1964, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Flussbett im Sind, Pakistan, 1950, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Frau mit Staubsauger in Illinois, USA, 1961, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Junge aus Cerro Blanco, Santiago de Chile, 1965, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Junge mit Pistole, Mexiko, 1965, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Nomaden unter Palme, Sahara, 1936,+A437 29 x 39 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Place St. Augustin, Paris, 1947, 29 x 39 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Plakatierer, Paris, 1952, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Söhne reicher Eltern, Kolumbien, 1961, 29 x 29 cmb/w print
Paul Almasy, Tanzplakat in Ruinen, Hannover, 1964, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print
Paul Almasy, Kreuzung, Vietnam, 1950, 29 x 29 cm, b/w print

Archiving the World

Paul Almasy (1906–2003) was a pioneer of photojournalism. For more than six decades he traveled the world with his camera and during this time took about 120,000 photographs. Almasy termed his oeuvre an “archive of the world”, cataloguing the photographs by country – and for each country he visited he then sorted the photographs by category: state, economy, culture, everyday life, animals and plants, being but a few of them. In this way, he established a detailed and comprehensive picture archive that today constitutes a unique document of 20th century history.

Paul Almasy’s oeuvre bears witness to his interest in the fabric of society and his preference for things foreign. His black-and-white work focuses almost always on people. Almasy is not concerned here with social class or milieu: he photographed the powerful people of his time, Bohemian artists in Paris, but also midwives in Africa, rice farmers in Indonesia and street children in Mexico. Even where Almasy addresses poverty and distress, he never does this as a voyeur but participates respectfully in what he sees while preserving his distance as an observer. It was an approach he internalized: “When I took photographs, I never crouched down like a cat about to pounce on its prey. I never attacked with my camera.” Paul Almasy always viewed himself as a photojournalist and never as a photographer. He wanted his pictures primarily to inform the viewer, meaning that the form was never to outweigh the content. Nevertheless, Almasy’s photographs are entrancing, attesting as they do to his unerring eye for subject matter, angle and cropping.

At the tender age of 17, Paul Almasy left his native Budapest and after various interludes, among others in Vienna and Munich, he ended up in Paris. It was the city that was to become the second home and main point of reference for the self-taught photojournalist – and it was likewise his gateway to the world. It was from here that he set out on his countless world trips on behalf of WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF. For a time, Paul Almasy was a visiting professor lecturing at the Sorbonne. He became a French citizen in 1956. In September 2003, Paul Almasy died at the age of 97 in Paris.

Biographical information

1906

born in Budapest, Hungary

1924–28

studies political science in Vienna, Munich and Heidelberg

1929–31

works as a correspondent for the German press agency "Wehr" in Rome

1936–39

crosses the Sahara by car for the "Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung", extended trips through Europe, Africa and the Near East

1952

starts working for the UN-organisations UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, IAO and FAO

1993

knight of the French “Ordre national du Mérite”

2003

dies in France