Erich Lessing was born in Vienna, son of a dentist and a concert pianist. In 1939, because of the Nazi regime, he emigrated to Palestine. His mother remained in Vienna and died in Auschwitz. Lessing worked in several kibbutzim as a kindergarten photographer. During World War II, he was a photographer with the British Army.
In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, he returned to Austria. He worked as a photographer for the Associated Press and in 1951 joined Magnum Photos, a photographer’s cooperative with offices in both Paris and New York. He worked primarily for LIFE, Picture Post, Paris Match and Quick Magazine. Lessing covered political events in Europe, particularly in the former Communist countries. In the early 1960s he endeavored to bring historical personalities and epochs alive through photography. These included the lives and times of great musicians, poets and physicians. Discoverers of the Universe is a selection from his photographs of astronomers. Erich Lessing published more than 40 books, including such classics as a history of Austria – Imago Austriae.
Lessing has taught photography in Arles, at the Venice Biennale and at the Salzburg Oskar Kokoschka Summer School. After 1976 he was employed as an instructor at the school of photography at the Academy of Applied Arts in his native city, Vienna. An important archive of photography, The Eric Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archive, has been established in Vienna.