Born in
Budapest in 1911 to a Jewish family, Weisz lost his father, Abraham Armin Weisz, in the
First World War a few years later. A saddler by profession, he fell from his horse, became infected by manure and left four children fatherless. Imre's mother, without money, chose to send the four-year-old to an orphanage. In 1931, after leaving the orphanage, he wanted to study engineering, but was rejected because he was Jewish. He and Endre Ernö Friedman, two years younger and also Jewish (who would become the most famous war photographer of the 20th century under the pseudonym
Robert Capa), decided to leave Hungary, which was shrouded in anti-Semitic hatred. On foot and without money, Capa and Chiki arrived in Berlin shortly before
Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Faced with the persecution of Jews, they went on foot to Paris, where they met the photographer
David Seymour, who got them work at the magazine
Regards, to cover the mobilisations of the Spanish
Popular Front, moving to Spain in 1936, just after the outbreak of the
Civil War. Together with Maurice Ochshorn, also a photographer, they were at the main combat fronts. According to his son, the poet Gabriel Weisz, many of the photos attributed to Capa were the product of the three friends' joint work, but Weisz never claimed authorship out of gratitude to Capa, who helped him flee to Mexico. For 70 years, the 126 film rolls lay tightly rolled up in three small cardboard boxes. When Aguilar's daughter sold his house in 1995, the three boxes that Weisz had packed in 1940 were rediscovered. This story is recounted in the documentary
The Mexican Suitcase (2012), directed by
Trisha Ziff. After several months in the concentration camp, he managed to escape and hid in Marseille. There he met refugees belonging to the
surrealist movement, such as the poet
Benjamin Péret and the painter
Remedios Varo, with whom he would make the journey to Mexico. Capa obtained permission through former president
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río for Chiki to travel to Mexico and gave him money. He boarded the
Serpa Pinto, arriving in
Veracruz on 1 October 1942. "He arrived without luggage. He only brought with him a toothbrush, a coat, and a false document stating that he was not Hungarian, because Mexico had no relations with that country", according to his son Pablo. With the support of a Jewish organisation, he was able to begin working for the firm belonging to
Senya Fleshin and
Mollie Steimer, Russian Jews united under the acronym Semo, photographing Mexican film artists, muralists, writers, and politicians. In 1944, at a meeting at the home of José and
Kati Horna, Chiki met
Leonora Carrington, who lived with Remedios Varo and Benjamin Péret on Calle Gabino Barreda. The group of refugees, who met in the
Colonia Roma district together with the surrealists, were joined by Spanish republicans such as , painters such as
Gunther Gerzso, photographers such as Maurice Ochshorn, and Kati Horna herself, whom Chiki had known from Hungary. In Mexico, Chiki married Leonora Carrington, became a press photographer, had two children and decided never to leave again, Mexico being his true refuge. He worked for the magazine
¡Hola!, at the Núcleo Radio Mil, at XEW, the Herdez company and with
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta. He set up his darkroom in his own house on Chihuahua Street and there he quietly stored away his memories, which included photographs with
Cantinflas and
María Félix. In his eighties, his eyesight deteriorated and he lost his job. He spent his last years in silence, in front of the television; he did not even speak to Leonora. He died from a serious renal illness and was buried in the Panteón Israelita, surrounded only by a few friends, Leonora Carrington and his children. ==Notes==