MAGNUM PHOTOGRAPHS
THE CLASSIC YEARS
1941-1985
Exhibition Dates: July 5 - August 7, 2002
Opening Reception: Friday, July 5, 5-7 p.m.

EVE ARNOLD • BRUNO BARBEY • IAN BERRY • WERNER BISCHOF • RENE BURRI
CORNELL CAPA • ROBERT CAPA • BRUCE DAVIDSON • ELLIOTT ERWITT
MARTINE FRANCK • STUART FRANKLIN • LEONARD FREED • PAUL FUSCO
BURT GLINN • PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS • ERICH HARTMANN • THOMAS HOEPKER
DAVID HURN • RICHARD KALVAR • HIROJI KUBOTA • CONSTANTINE MANOS
STEVE MCCURRY • WAYNE MILLER • INGE MORATH • MARC RIBOUD
GEORGE RODGER • DAVID "CHIM" SEYMOUR • MARILYN SILVERSTONE
DENNIS STOCK • SUSAN MEISELAS • HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

At the time Magnum was founded photography had become an important historical, documentary, and informative medium. In the 1920s and early 1930s small, hand-held cameras like the Emanox and Leica had been designed that could record a situation as it was occurring. Armed with portable cameras, photojournalists were traveling on assignment, or on their own initiative, taking photographs for picture magazines "in a kind of pictorial shorthand that sums up a person, place, and situation at a glance." Their photographs satisfied a growing demand by the media for images of current events and news reportage.

In an era prior to television, documentary photographs were an extremely effective way for people isolated on one side of the world to become aware of events going on elsewhere. Just as WPA photographers had called attention to the poverty of migrants and farmers in the Dust Bowl era, Magnum photographers believed that their photographs could be "weapons for truth." For the first time in history photographic images were traveling across the globe at unheard of speeds to reach untold numbers of viewers. Robert Capa's photograph, "Fallen Soldier. Spanish Civil War," 1936, first appeared in France's picture magazine, Vu, and was then picked up by Life and England's Picture Post. During the decades when it seemed "the battlefield was everywhere," Robert Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Chim, George Rodger, Wayne Miller, and others tirelessly and fearlessly shot the horrors of war close-up "with concentrated truth," little concerned with their own safety. Rodger walked three hundred miles through mountains to escape the Japanese in Burma. Cartier-Bresson spent much of the war as a German prisoner of war and, after escaping on his third try, was with the French Resistance. Chim photographed the plight of orphaned and maimed children for UNESCO. While no one at Magnum was outspoken about their personal politics, most of the photographers privately hoped their images might make the world a better place.

Today many Magnum photographs are regarded as classic masterpieces that encapsulate in a single image the sweeping global changes and looming personalities of the twentieth century. They show the ending of imperialism, the rise of fascism, civil wars, racial tensions, statesmen and celebrities, the nuclear age, and the celebration of the end of war. All of the photographs are historical documents, but some transcend history to become timeless, poetic, or elegiac images that, once seen, are not forgotten. The vast range of styles and expressions reflect the spirit of independence that has always characterized Magnum. Some photographs are funny, others are gritty or disturbing, some simply record a fascinating moment. As a group they portray the breadth of humanity in the twentieth century in all its poignant, humorous, troubled, or placid moments.


EVE ARNOLD
"Marilyn Monroe dancing with Arthur Miller on the set of The Misfits,
Hollywood," 1960
"Mother and Child's Hand," 1959
Eve Arnold was born in Philadelphia to Russian immigrant parents and began photographing in 1946, becoming a full member of Magnum in 1957. She made five trips to the Soviet Union, and later photographed in China. In 1960 Arnold photographed "Marilyn Monroe dancing with Arthur Miller on the set of The Misfits, Hollywood." Surrounded by darkness the couple dances passionately together under the glow of a single stage light.

BRUNO BARBEY
"The Italians"
Bruno Barbey was born in Morocco in 1941 and studied in Switzerland. He photographed in Italy from 1961 to 1964, and then became associated with Magnum. His work took him to regions of political unrest throughout the third world. Beginning in the 1980s he photographed in Poland, North Africa and the Far East.

IAN BERRY
"Ballroom Dancing"
Ian Berry was born in Lancashire, England in 1934 and moved to South Africa in 1952. He worked for magazines until moving to Paris in 1962 where he became associated with Magnum. In 1966 he moved to London to work for The Observer Magazine. He photographed Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia, conflicts in Israel and Ireland, wars in Vietnam, Zaire, and Rwanda, famine in Ethiopia and apartheid in South Africa.

WERNER BISCHOF
"Flute Player, On the Road to Cuzco," 1954
"Silk Drying, Kyoto"
Born in 1916, the Swiss photographer began photographing 1932. After covering the war in Europe he joined Magnum in 1949. He traveled throughout the Far East, Mexico and South American. In 1954 Bischof was killed in a car accident in the Peruvian Andes.

RENE BURRI
"Rooftops, Sao Paulo," 1960
"Che Guevara, Havana," 1963
"Alberto Giacometti Smoking in his Studio," 1960
Born in Switzerland in 1933, Rene Burri worked in photography and film. He joined Magnum in 1953 and began traveling around the world. In 1959 he became a full member of Magnum and was later instrumental in creating Magnum Films. He received the International Film and Television Festival Award in New York in 1967. Burri was elected European vice-president of Magnum in 1982 and had an exhibition at the Galerie Magnum in Paris titled, "Terre de Guerre."

ROBERT CAPA
"Fallen Soldier, Spanish Civil War," 1936
"D-Day Landing, Omaha Beach, Normandy," 1944
"Francoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso, Antibes," 1951
Robert Capa is virtually synonymous with Magnum. Born André Friedmann in Hungary in 1913, he began photographing in 1930. He moved to Paris and adopted the name Robert Capa in 1935. He formulated the idea for Magnum with the help of other photographers, and in 1947 created the agency, later becoming its president. While covering the Spanish Civil War he made one of the most famous photographs of the century titled, "Fallen Soldier. Spanish Civil War," 1936. Capa's photographs appeared regularly in European and U.S. magazines. In 1939 he emigrated to New York and worked as a correspondent for Life during World War II. Risking his life he photographed soldiers wading to shore in, "D-Day Landing, Omaha Beach, Normandy," 1944. His travels took him all over the world. In 1954 he died after stepping on a land mine while photographing troop patrols for Life in Thai-Binh, Indochina (Vietnam).

CORNELL CAPA
"JFK in the Oval Office," 1961
"Bolshoi Ballet School, Moscow," 1958
"Female Human Cannonball," 1947
Born in Hungary in 1918, Cornell Friedmann moved to Paris in 1936 to work as a photographic printer for his brother, Robert Capa. He emigrated to New York in 1937 to work at the photo agency Pix, adopting the name Cornell Capa. He was a printer for Life magazine from 1937 to 1941, and a staff photographer from 1946 to 1954. Capa made the first of several Latin American trips in 1953, and became a full member of Magnum in 1954. He founded the Robert Capa/David Seymour Photographic Foundation in Israel in 1958, and then founded and directed the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Among his masterworks is the lovely photograph of a line of young ballerinas in training titled, "Bolshoi Ballet School. Moscow", 1958.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
"Rue Mouffetard, Paris 1932"
"Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris 1932"
Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup, France in 1908. He studied painting, and attended Cambridge University before traveling to the Ivory Coast in 1931. Back in France he made his first photographs which were published and exhibited. He spent a year in Mexico, and worked on projects with Paul Strand and Jean Renois. During the war he was imprisoned by the Germans but managed to escape. In 1947 his photographs were exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art and that same year he became a cofounder of Magnum. He lived and worked in the Far East and in 1952 published his profoundly influential book The Decisive Moment. Cartier-Bresson is one of the most celebrated of the artists from the Magnum group. He still lives in Paris.

BRUCE DAVIDSON
"The Dwarf," 1958
Bruce Davidson was born in Illinois in 1933 and began photographing while in his teens. He studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and with Josef Albers at Yale. In 1957 he worked as a free-lance photographer for Life magazine and became a full member of Magnum in 1959, becoming its vice-president in 1972. He has had numerous exhibitions and books of his photographs published over the years. In his photograph, The Dwarf, 1958, Davidson created a forlorn image of a scowling midget clown, smoking a cigarette on the deserted, rain soaked grounds of a circus.

ELLIOTT ERWITT
"The Kitchen Debate, Moscow," 1959
"Ballycotton, Ireland," 1968
"New Jersey," 1951
"Nicaragua," 1957
Elliott Erwitt was born in Paris in 1928 to Russian immigrant parents. In his youth he lived in Milan, Paris and New York, before his family moved to Los Angeles where he learned photography. He became associated with Magnum in 1953, later serving as its president. In his photographs of humans and animals Erwitt generally has an eye for humor. In "Ballycotton, Ireland", 1968 he photographed a small, lone dog jumping inexplicably in midair, dwarfed by a nearby wooden crate and post.

MARTINE FRANCK
"Tuilleries Metro, Paris," 1977
"Paris," 1972
Born in Belgium in 1938, Martine Franck was raised in the U.S. and England. She studied in Madrid and Paris and began working as a photographer in Far East in 1963. After working in the Time-Life laboratory in Paris she began freelancing in 1965. She founded the agency Viva with fellow photographers in 1972, became an associate member of Magnum in 1980 and full member in 1983. She is the wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Photographs by Franck at Andrew Smith Gallery include Tuilleries Metro, Paris, 1977, in which a man bends his head to make a phone call while above him, on the phone, sits a gigantic cat.

STUART FRANKLIN
"Lone Protestor, Tianenment Square, Beijing," 1989
Born in London in 1956, Franklin studied photography at Oxford Polytechnic and at the West Surrey College of Art and Design. He worked as a photographer for Sygma Photo Agency and joined Magnum in 1985. That year he was awarded the Christian Aid Award for humanitarian photography, followed by a World Press Photo Award in 1991. On exhibit is his moving image of political defiance between a Chinese dissident and a line of tanks titled, "Lone Protester. Tianenment Square, Beijing", 1989.

LEONARD FREED
"Muscle Boy, Harlem," 1963
"Martin Luther King, Jr. Baltimore," 1963
"New York," 1954
Born in Brooklyn in 1929, Leonard Freed was photographing in Europe and North Africa in 1950. He became associated with Magnum in 1956 and settled in Amsterdam in 1958 to photograph for the Dutch Salvation Army magazine. By the 1960s he was free-lancing and traveling, photographing blacks in America and the Six-Day War in Israel. In his photograph "Martin Luther King, Jr., Baltimore", 1963, he caught a moment of hope as a smiling Mr. King turns around in an open convertible to grasp the hands of three African Americans on a crowded street.

PAUL FUSCO
"La Causa," 1968
"Miners, Kentucky," 1959
Born in Massachusetts in 1930, Paul Fusco served as a photographer in the United States Signal Corps in Korea. From 1957 to 1971 he was a staff photographer for Look magazine. He became a member of Magnum in 1972. His subject matter has ranged from the funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy, to the lives of migrant workers in the U.S.

BURT GLINN
"Sen. Robert Kennedy With His Campaign Team," 1968
"Nikita Khruschev at the Lincoln Memorial," 1959
Burt Glinn was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1925 and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946. He studied at Harvard and was the photographer and picture editor for The Harvard Crimson. Between 1949-1950 he worked for Life magazine before branching off to free-lance around the world. He was first associated with Magnum in 1951 and became a full member in 1954. He was elected president of Magnum in 1972.

PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS
"Vietnam Inc.," 1970
Welsh photographer Philip Jones Griffiths was born in 1936 and began photographing in the 1950s, working for the Manchester Guardian. In the 1960s he was a free-lance photographer in Vietnam. He became associated with Magnum in 1967. After working in Thailand in the 1970s he moved to New York City and was elected president of Magnum, holding the office for five terms. In the disturbing image, "Vietnam, Inc." 1970, Griffiths photographed an elderly prisoner of war chained to a plank, an expression of blank hopelessness upon his battered face.

ERICH HARTMANN
"Wiscasset, Maine"
"Our Daily Bread, Centraila, Kansas," 1956
Born in Munich, Germany in 1922, Erich Hartmann began making photographs in 1930. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1938. He volunteered for the U.S. Army in 1943 and served in Europe, later moving to New York to study photography. He became a member of Magnum in 1951, and created an exhibition and book called "Our Daily Bread".

THOMAS HOEPKER
"Muhammad Ali, Chicago," 1966
Born in Germany in 1936, Thomas Hoepker studied art history and archaeology in Munich from 1956 to 1959 and then worked as a photographer, reporting all over the world before joining Stern magazine in 1964. He became a free-lance photographer in 1968 and produced documentary films for German television, as well as working for Stern and the American magazine Geo. He became a member of Magnum in 1989. On exhibit is Hoepker's photograph, "Muhammad Ali.  Chicago", 1966, in which the young, confident fighter leaps into the air in front of the New York skyline.

DAVID HURN
"Cannes Film Festival," 1964
Born in England in 1934, David Hurn worked as assistant photographer at Reflex Agency in London between 1955 and 1957. He then turned to free-lancing in London. He became a full member of Magnum in 1967. He moved to Wales in 1971 to head the School of Documentary Photography and Film. From 1979 to 1980 he was the Distinguished Visiting Artist and Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University in Tempe.

RICHARD KALVAR
"Sunbather, Bryant Park, New York City," 1969
Born in 1944 and raised in Brooklyn, Kalvar attended Cornell University. He began working as a freelance photographer and in 1971 joined the photo agency Vu. The following year he was the cofounder of the agency Viva. He became an associate of Magnum in 1975 and has continued to photograph everyday life, especially the Paris suburbs and the city of Rome.

HIROJI KUBOTA
"Black Panthers, Chicago," 1968
Born in 1939, Japanese photographer Hiroji Kubota met Magnum members Rene Burri and Elliott Erwitt during their trip to Japan. Influenced by them he moved to New York and then to Chicago. In 1968 Kubota returned to Japan and that same year became a Magnum associate. As a photo reporter in 1975 he witnessed the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon. After Vietnam his focus continued to be on Asia. He visited Korea and then extensively photographed in China and, more recently, documented Asian countries east of Burma. In Chicago Kubota made a stirring photograph titled "Black Panthers. Chicago," 1968, by angling his camera down on three black men standing in a snow-covered rail yard, raising their fists in defiance at the city in the distance.

CONSTANTINE MANOS
"Crete, Greece," 1964
Born in South Carolina in 1934 to immigrant Greek parents, Constantine Manos was photographing for local newspapers at age fourteen. In 1953 he became the official photographer at the summer music festival at Tanglewood. Working as a free-lance photographer he lived in Greece, photographing life in isolated villages. In 1965 he became a full member of Magnum.

STEVE MCCURRY
"Afghan Refugee, Pakistan," 1985
Award winning photographer Steve McCurry was born in Philadelphia. After working at a newspaper he left for India to free-lance. Since then he has covered areas of conflict in the Iran-Iraq war, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. McCurry's haunting portrait of a wide-eyed Afghan girl titled, "Afghan Refugee. Pakistan," 1985, elicited much attention when it appeared on the cover of National Geographic Magazine.

SUSAN MEISELAS
"Carnival Strippers," 1973
"El Salvador," 1980
Born in Baltimore in 1948, Susan Meiselas became a member of Magnum in 1976. She has been a freelance journalist since then, working on projects in India, Chile, and other parts of the world. In the 1970s and 1980s she photographed the atrocities and conflicts in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In her photograph titled, "El Salvador," 1980, shadows of prisoners with their arms raised over their heads pass across an earthen wall.

WAYNE MILLER
"Hiroshima," 1945
"Chicago," 1947
Born in Chicago in 1918, Wayne Miller studied banking while working part-time as a photographer. He served in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to Edward Steichen's Naval Aviation Unit. He began working as a free-lance photographer in 1946, photographing blacks in the northern states on Guggenheim fellowships. He worked for Life magazine until 1953 and was Edward Steichen's assistant on "The Family of Man" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. His photograph "Hiroshima", 1945 was taken shortly after the atomic blast.

INGE MORATH
"Mrs. Nash, The Mall, London," 1953
Born in Austria in 1923 and educated in France and Germany, Inge Morath began collaborating with Ernst Haas in 1949, and was associated with Magnum as a writer and researcher. In 1951 she moved to London and began to photograph. She later traveled to Iran, Tunisia, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

MARC RIBOUD
"Street Scene, Beijing," 1965
"Great Wall of China," 1971
Born in 1923, Marc Riboud was with the French Resistance from 1943 to 1945. In 1951 he became a free-lance photographer and, soon afterward, a member of Magnum. He traveled in the Far East, making such engaging photographs as "Street Scene, Beijing," 1965, in which slices of life on a street in China are framed through six windows.

GEORGE RODGER
"Nuban Wrestler, Sudan," 1949
"Hassau Chieftains, Chad," 1941

George Rodger was born in England in 1908. He joined the British Merchant Navy in 1927 and sailed twice around the world. At this time he began photographing. Between 1939 and 1945 he covered the war in Europe for Life magazine, making Americans aware through his photographs of the desperate plight of the British. He met Robert Capa in 1943 and was one of the cofounders of Magnum. During his life he traveled the entire length of Africa, later settling in England where he continued to photograph on assignment. In 1949, in the Sudan, he made the photograph, "Nuban Wrestler." In a tribal setting the gigantic winner of a wrestling contest is being carried on the shoulders of his companion high above the heads of his fellow wrestlers. Also on view is a stirring photograph of saber wielding warriors titled, "Haussa Horsemen, Tchad," 1941.

DAVID SEYMOUR (CHIM)
"Prostitute, Essen, Germany," 1947
"Bernard Berenson, Borghese Gallery, Rome," 1955
"Sophia Loren, Rome," 1955
Born in Warsaw in 1911, David Szymin moved to Russia with his family in 1914 and returned to Warsaw in 1919. He studied printing-ink chemistry at the Sorbonne in 1921-33 and adopted the nickname Chim. He was working as a free-lance photographer in Paris when he met Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. He photographed in the Spanish Civil War, and other events in Europe, traveled to Mexico and eventually moved to New York. He was a co-founder of Magnum in 1947. He was killed in 1956 by machine gun fire while driving near the Suez Canal to cover an exchange of prisoners. His famous photograph, "Prostitute, Essen, Germany", 1947, is one of several photographs on exhibit.

MARILYN SILVERSTONE
"Kashkelen State Farm, Kazakhstan," 1958
"Bangladesh"
Born in London in 1929, Marilyn Silverstone was an associate editor for Art News, Industrial Design, and Interiors in the 1950s. She became a free-lance photographer in 1955, living in New Delhi, India between 1959-1973, having joined Magnum in 1967. She became a Buddhist nun in Kathmandu, Nepal where she researched the vanishing customs of Rajasthan and the Himalayan kingdoms. She died in 1999 in a Tibetan monastery she founded. Exhibited is her moving photograph of desperate famine conditions titled, "Bangladesh," in which a young girl sits over an emaciated child.

DENNIS STOCK
"Trumpetist 'Punch' Miller, New Orleans," 1958
"James Dean," 1955
"Rock Festival, Venice Beach, Santa Monica," 1968
Born in New York City in 1928, Dennis Stock served in the U.S. military before working as an apprentice to a photographer. In 1951 he became associated with Magnum. He took a series of photographs of James Dean in 1955, also photographing jazz musicians during this time. He created a film company and served as vice-president of Magnum's film and new media division. On exhibit is his photograph, "James Dean," 1955, in which the young actor wanders through the rainy streets of New York City at twilight.

Liz Kay


Reference: In Our Time: The World As Seen By Magnum Photographers by William Manchester, with essays by Jean LaCouture and Fred Ritchin. The American Federation of Arts with W.W. Norton & Co., New York, London. 1989.

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