Henri Dauman, Photographer of Postwar Movie star Existence, Is Lifeless at 90

Henri Dauman, a Holocaust survivor and French émigré who as a magazine photographer depicted the ascent of postwar political and celebrity society with his photographs of President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Elvis Presley coming into and leaving the U.S. Military and Elizabeth Taylor reacting viscerally to a heavyweight title match, died on Sept. 13 at his house in Hampton Bays, N.Y. He was 90.
His death was verified by his granddaughter Nicole Jones.
As a freelance photographer, Mr. Dauman was a a person-gentleman agency who designed his mark in the late 1950s and early ’60s with shots that had a cinematic appear, a quality he attributed to his adore of the films, particularly the shadowy earth of film noir that he explored as a teenage orphan in postwar Paris.
In 1958, he depicted the designer Yves Saint Laurent in the swirl of Periods Sq., on the lookout both of those a section of it and aside from it. The future calendar year he photographed Marilyn Monroe and the playwright Arthur Miller, her partner at the time, throughout the premiere of the movie “Some Like It Incredibly hot.” She appears lovingly at him, but Mr. Dauman said he did not see Miller returning her like.
“I usually looked to display the temperament of the subjects as they are, not the character that they job to the public,” he explained in “Henri Dauman: Wanting Up” (2018), a documentary directed by Peter Kenneth Jones, who is married to Ms. Jones, one particular of the film’s producers.
In 1960, Mr. Dauman photographed the Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson heavyweight title combat at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. In “Looking Up,” he recalled using a number of shots of the bout (which Patterson won) but seen a Hollywood star ringside who was more intriguing: Ms. Taylor, in a sleeveless, reduced-lower dress, shouting, cringing and cheering.
“That sequence created the tale,” he said.
Mr. Dauman adopted John F. Kennedy from his marketing campaign for the presidency in 1960 to his inauguration and ultimately to his funeral on Nov. 25, 1963. There he captured Jacqueline Kennedy, her face at the rear of a black veil, as she walked in the funeral procession flanked by her husband’s brothers Robert and Edward. His pictures were being splashed more than 5 web pages of Everyday living magazine.
Mr. Dauman uncovered common floor with Mrs. Kennedy by talking French to her. Similarly, he chatted with Presley about losing their mothers at a young age. In 1960, he photographed Presley seeking forlorn although waving from a coach in New Jersey as he headed household to Memphis just after his discharge from the Military.
“His photographs had been so a lot alive, even though they were being a instant captured from background each and every just one experienced a everyday living of its have,” the photojournalist Lawrence Schiller, a close friend of Mr. Dauman’s, reported in a mobile phone job interview. “They opened the doorway to a different way to consider about what you had been viewing.”
In addition to Existence, Mr. Dauman’s perform appeared from the 1950s by means of the ’70s in The New York Instances Journal and in Newsweek, Smithsonian, New York, Epoca, Der Stern and Paris Match magazines. His work captured civil legal rights protests, street scenes in New York Metropolis and a Bronx gang termed the Savage Nomads.
In 1966, he flew to Saigon to obtain the chief of a group of Buddhist monks who ended up immolating them selves to protest the Vietnam War. He said in the documentary film that he had “infiltrated” the team and observed the chief, Thich Tri Quang. His photograph of him appeared on the address of the French magazine L’Express with a headline that translated to “The Gentleman Who Tends to make The usa Tremble.”
Henri David Dauman was born on April 5, 1933, in Paris. His moms and dads ended up Jewish immigrants from Poland. His father, Isaja, who was identified as Charles, was a milliner. His mother, Chana (Blumenfeld) Dauman, who went by Annette, was a seamstress.
In Might 1941, virtually a 12 months right after France fell to Germany, his father was summoned and arrested by the Vichy regime and later died in the Auschwitz death camp. In July 1942, when the French law enforcement experimented with to split into their apartment, Henri and his mom slipped absent to his Aunt Anna’s condominium. They later on fled to Paris’s western suburbs. In Limay, Henri was positioned in the house of a spouse and children acquaintance when his mother identified shelter close by in Mantes-la-Jolie.
Limay and Mantes-la-Jolie turned frequent targets of German aerial strafing attacks at 1 issue a cat Henri was keeping was struck, however he was remaining unharmed. He and his mom shortly fled to a farmhouse in Normandy.
Right after Paris was liberated in 1944, they returned to their condominium, but their time with each other was quick. His mom died in 1946 immediately after swallowing bicarbonate that had been tainted with poison, just one of eight victims of an unscrupulous pharmacist. When his relations refused to choose him in, Henri went to live in the 1st of two orphanages that became residence. As a teenage orphan he experienced the independence to function as an apprentice studio photographer, then an assistant trend photographer and amusement photographer for Radio Luxembourg and an agency.
In late 1950, at the invitation of an uncle, he emigrated to New York City (however he retained his French citizenship all his lifestyle).
In New York he took English lessons, packaged women’s lingerie on an assembly line and worked as an office boy at the Belgian American Chamber of Commerce. In 1954, he started to consider photographs of French politicians, artists and motion picture stars for France-Amérique, a New York Town-primarily based newspaper (now a magazine).
Mr. Dauman achieved his foreseeable future 1st spouse, Denise Le Goff, at a France-Amérique event. She died in 1985. In addition to his granddaughter Ms. Jones, he is survived by his next wife, Odiana (Somar) Dauman a daughter and a son from his initially relationship, Brigitte Dauman-Suerez and Philippe Dauman, the former president and chief govt of Viacom a stepson, Denis Somar 5 other grandchildren and two fantastic-grandchildren.
Mr. Dauman’s to start with assignment for Life was the 1958 relationship of the actress Jean Seberg to François Moreuil in her hometown, Marshalltown, Iowa. His pics spanned three web pages.
In 1964, again for Lifetime, he photographed a Pop Artwork gallery display in Manhattan, “The American Grocery store,” in which he captured Andy Warhol standing amid shipping cartons that Warhol had painted and a stack of Campbell’s Soup cans, like the 32 he had famously painted two a long time before.
In 1996, Mr. Dauman and Time Inc. sued the Warhol estate in federal court docket in New York for copyright infringement over Warhol’s use of the Dauman picture of Mrs. Kennedy at her husband’s funeral for silk monitor functions, which include “Sixteen Jackies” (1964).
Mr. Dauman’s situation was settled out of court.
When Vainness Fair celebrated his operate in 2014, Mr. Dauman was requested to comment on some of his shots, including his 1970 portrait of the director Federico Fellini, who appears perplexed, his fingers splayed over his brow.
“I needed him to transfer in a certain direction,” Mr. Dauman mentioned, “so with my index finger, I place it in opposition to his nose and I moved him a tiny little bit. And that is his reaction!”