Between 1936 and 1938 Chim covered the Spanish Civil War (alongside colleague Robert Capa) and other international political events.

[5] In 1939 he covered the Loyalist Spanish war refugees on the S.S. Sinaia to Mexico and then later in the year he arrived in the United States.

In 1948 he received a commission through UNICEF and traveled to Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Germany to document the plight of World War II refugee children.

[9] In 1947, Chim co-founded the Magnum Photos photography cooperative, together with Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom he had befriended in Paris in the 1930s.

[6] Chim's work remains available by way of Magnum Photos and his estate is managed by nephew Ben Shneiderman and niece Helen Sarid.

Chim's reputation for his photos of war orphans was magnified by his later work in photographing famous people of his time.

These included: Chim's work is held in these and other public collections: Media related to David Seymour at Wikimedia Commons