An internationally recognized photographer, he is known for his portraits of many key figures in art, literature and the sciences working in Paris, as well as for his candid "street photography".

Together with numerous other Hungarians and immigrants, Marton joined the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II.

Renewed interest in the Hungarian artists of 20th-century Paris has generated major 21st-century exhibits of Ervin Marton and his contemporaries.

[citation needed] In 2010–2011 Marton's photos of female nudes were exhibited with those of other Hungarian artists at the Institut hongrois in Paris.

Ervin Marton was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, in 1912 to István Preisz and his wife Janka Csillag, a Hungarian-Jewish couple.

A cousin-in-law by marriage was Lajos Tihanyi (1885–1938), one of the Hungarian artists' circle known as The Eight (Nyolcak) (1909–1918 in Budapest), who became a renowned painter and lithographer.

[4] After completing his Baccalaureate, Marton continued his studies at the Omike Drawing School in Budapest, under the artist Manó Vestróczy.

Edit Hoffman purchased several of Marton's works from the exhibit for what became the Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria).

Through his cousin, the painter Lajos Tihanyi (who died in 1938), Marton became part of an older circle of established artists and writers.

Marton was among numerous immigrants who joined the French Resistance, working in a small group with other Hungarians and foreigners, many of them Jewish.

[9] In collaboration with the artist József Strémi, in the 1940s Marton created the design for a stamp to celebrate the poet Sándor Petőfi, renowned for his role during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

[9] Marton also took part with Lajos Papp in several high-risk actions to prepare false documents for wanted persons and help them hide from the Nazis.

)[11] Numerous young Jewish Hungarian artists and intellectuals were part of the Resistance, including the painter Sándor Józsa, sculptor István Hajdú (Etienne Hajdu), journalists László Kőrösi and Imre Gyomrai, the photographers Andras (André) Steiner and Lucien Hervé (by then a French citizen), and the printer Ladislas Mandel.

Marton made a graphic image for the Phenix, an underground pamphlet published in April 1944 by the Magyar Szemle (Revue Hongroise), to commemorate the three Hungarians killed from the Manouchian Group.

[8] Marton was able to protect much of Tihanyi's and his own early work through the war, helped by his friendships with Brassai and Bölöni, who arranged for storage.

In the postwar years, Marton helped new artists, for instance, teaching photography techniques to the Hungarian immigrant Michael Peto and encouraging him at the beginning of his career.

[7] Marton was selected as a photographer for the art catalog, Peintres Témoins de leur Temps (Painters Witness of their Times).

In addition, his portraits of the writers and artists Jean Cocteau, Marc Chagall, Paul Léautaud, François Mauriac, and Pablo Picasso, among others, were exhibited at the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library).

These portraits, along with those of Jacques Prévert, Darius Milhaud, Albert Schweitzer, Jean Genet, Albert Camus, Charlie Chaplin, Gaston Bachelard, Yves Montand, Juliette Gréco, Leonor Fini, Tsuguharu Foujita and Marcel Jouhandeau, received critical acclaim.

Marton's work has been collected by the Hungarian National Gallery, the Bibliothèque Nationale, private collectors and major corporations.

[citation needed] Since the Hungarian Museum of Photography (Magyar Fotográfiai Múzeum) opened in 1991, it has also collected Marton's work.