Magnum Photos at 70: London Events Program

This year Magnum Photos is celebrating 70 years of contribution to photography and world history with a global events program. Public events across New York, London, Paris and in Asia will give people the opportunity to get closer to Magnum. Through engagement with its archival and contemporary work, the agency is committed to connecting more people to the importance of the image and the need to continue telling the world’s most important stories.

As part of these celebrations, a special fortnight of events will be taking place across London from May 8 to 21, 2017. Ranging from an experimental two-week artist residency to a capsule collection of t-shirts, as well as a series of exhibitions and talks throughout the two weeks. Full details here

David Hurn The Beatles during filming of ‘A Hard Days Night’. The Beatles film was primarily shot on a moving train. Beatles during shooting. London, England. 1964. © David Hurn | Magnum Photos

Magnum and Me: A Personal View

As the agency turns 70, Magnum’s Executive Director David Kogan offers an intimate perspective on photography and why it matters

Robert Capa US troops assault Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings (first assault).June 6th, 1944. Normandy, France © Robert Capa © International Center of Photography | Magnum Photos

David Kogan is Magnum’s Executive Director and a collector of photography, most notably of Robert Capa. Today we accompany this article with a collection of Robert Capa prints on the Magnum Shop.

Magnum Photos is 70 this year. Seven decades of great work, arguments, financial chaos, more arguments, loves, hatreds and big egos. It is a miracle of survival and commitment that has supported generations of talented photographers to do their work.

As someone who only joined the agency three years ago I’m often asked what makes Magnum worth it? What’s the point of keeping it going after 70 years in a world when so many images are created everyday?

It’s partially a personal commitment to photography itself. It’s also a belief that Magnum occupies a place of critical importance in the modern world of photography and photojournalism.

I started collecting magazines and newspapers when I was in my teens; reading Picture Post and Life magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s. The use of photography dominates these journals as does the skill of the photographers. However, my interest was the history. You get a true sense of another world by reading and looking at a magazine published months before the Second World War, when the writers and photographers have little idea what is going to happen. One of those Picture Posts in 1938 featured “the world’s greatest photographer,” Robert Capa, who had covered both the flood of refugees from the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasion of China. This was nine years before he helped create Magnum…….

So, why Magnum and why now?

People say that the world of photography has been radically altered by the digital revolution. There are billions of images uploaded every year from millions of smart phones. Everyone can be a photographer.

This is nothing new. Since the earliest cheap cameras were produced photography has been a mass medium. In the 1920s and 30s every household recorded family snaps on mass-produced cameras. We shouldn’t be surprised that the desire to see a single moment frozen in time appeals to the human eye and emotion. We all want a record of what is important to us. The image or photo gives us the easiest way to get it.

But if you believe that in a world of mass production there is still room for quality and talent then you will always have the great artists, the great singers and the great photographers whose work is different. It speaks to a higher level.

Henri Cartier-Bresson Muslim women on the slopes of Hari Parbal Hill, praying toward the sun rising behind the Himalayas. Srinagar. Kashmir, India. 1948. © Henri Cartier-Bresson | Magnum Photos

Go here for full details of these events celebrating Magnum 

Magnum Live Lab (May 8 – 21, 2017)

Magnum Photographers Olivia Arthur, Carl De Keyzer and Mark Power will work alongside each other in a two week residency in the Magnum Print Room, responding to the local area. Transforming the space into a working lab, the resulting work will create an exhibition that stands as a celebration of and an inquiry into the medium of photography and the creative process of making.

Find out more here.

Magnum Photos at 70: 7 Decades of Advertising (May 8 – 20, 2017)

Magnum Photos and G.F Smith Photographic have collaborated to explore Magnum’s long history with the advertising industry, featuring notable archival and contemporary examples of Magnum’s work in this area over the last 70 years. The exhibition will recreate work on corresponding historical papers from G.F Smith and feature work from pioneers of the photographic advertising industry such as Burt Glinn.

Find out more here.

Magnum Photos Now: What is Magnum? (May 10, 2017)

Throughout Magnum’s seventy year history there have been many attempts to define the agency, its members’ vision of photography, its values and its history. This lively discussion chaired by photography critic Sean O’Hagan, and featuring the agency’s Executive Director David Kogan alongside Magnum photographers Jonas Bendiksen, David Hurn and Olivia Arthur, will ask the question, ‘What is Magnum?’ and what is the future of this historic agency?

Find out more here.

70 at 70 in London (May 15 – June 15, 2017)

The 70 at 70 exhibition at London’s Kings Cross charts a potted history of Magnum. The exhibition features 70 pictorial and historical photographic icons, celebrating the diversity of the Magnum Photos agency and how its photographers have borne witness to major events of the last 70 years.

Find out more here.

The Magnum Home (May 17 – 21, 2017)

A London pop-up in collaboration with Plinth and publisher Thames & Hudson will explore youth culture, through an exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun, installations, talks and events, as well as the opportunity to purchase limited-edition products by Plinth that incorporate the work of Magnum photographers.

Find out more here.

Magnum at Photo London (May 17 – 21, 2017)

At this year’s Photo London, Magnum is showing a combination of early and contemporary work. This will include both modern and vintage prints alongside period works from Magnum’s 40th exhibition ‘In Our Time’. Magnum is also presenting a unique installation on Japan by Max Pinckers, in which he juxtaposes his own work with vintage prints by Werner Bischof.

Find out more here.

Magnum Photos x Richardson at Dover Street Market London (May 18 – 21, 2017)

Magnum Photos’ extensive archive has been curated by Andrew Richardson on the theme of resistance and protest to create a project at the intersection between fashion and documentary photography in collaboration with Dover Street Market. The capsule collection of 5 t-shirts will be sold exclusively via Dover Street Market.

Find out more here.

David Hurn’s Swaps (May 18 – 21, 2017)

To celebrate the community of photographers of which he is a part, Magnum’s current President Martin Parr has curated a selection of the print swaps from which David Hurn has built an extraordinary collection for an exhibition at Photo London.

Find out more here.

Join us in celebrating Magnum’s 70th anniversary throughout 2017. Bookmark our anniversary hub to find seminal stories, new work, and discover what Magnum events are happening near you.

View and licence some of the our most iconic pictures from our dedicated 70th anniversary page on Magnum Pro.

 

 

6 photography quotes every photographer should live by

From Digital Camera World……Learn from the famous photographers and true legends of photography with our practical guide to the six best photography quotes ever uttered and how you can put them into practice.

In the 175 years that photography has been around, some very smart people have picked up cameras, and some of these very smart people have said some very smart things.

Indeed, some photographers, such as Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier Bresson, wrote extensively on the theory and practice of photography, and as we’ll see, were never short of an illuminating maxim or pithy aphorism.

Other photographers wanted their images to do the talking, and went in for more esoteric observations which we’re still puzzling over today.

Anyway, the best quotations about any subject are those which still help and inspire people today, so with this in mind, here are our six favourite photographic quotes – along with some ideas on how you can put these wise words into practice.

Photography Quote No. 1

Photographer:  Robert Capa

Quote: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”

What it means
If you get closer to your subject you will often end up with sharper, better composed shots. By filling the frame, or even cropping in closer, you’ll also eliminate dead space, and get a more intimate, involving image.

Don’t get so close, though, that you put yourself in danger – war photographer Capa sadly got too close to a landmine while covering the Viet Minh uprising in Vietnam in 1954.

SEE MORE: The 55 best photographers of all time. In the history of the world. Ever.

How to do it yourself
Try using a standard prime lens with a fixed focal length, rather than a long telephoto zoom, as this forces you to get in close to your subject and engage.

Even better, 50mm and 85mm primes usually have wide maximum apertures, which are handy in low light and help to blur the background, while revealing less optical distortion than zooms. They’re often great value too.

 

Go and see the rest here

Josef Koudelka – the great Czech photographer

Today I start an occasional series on the great photographers, those who are referred to as masters. This series will be to introduce you to photographers who you may have heard of but never investigated or perhaps you have never come across and so are completely new to you.

Today I introduce Josef Koudelka

Josef Koudelka

(1938-) Documentary, Landscape, Photojournalism

Biography: Born in a tiny village of Moravia, Koudelka began photographing his family and surroundings as a teenager with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera.

He was trained at the Technical University in Prague and worked as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava from 1961-67. He had been able to obtain an old Rolleiflex and in 1961, while working as a theater photographer in Prague, he also started a detailed study of the gypsies of Slovakia, who were then undergoing further attempts to “assimilate” them within the Czech state. His work was the subject of an exhibition in Prague in 1967.

In 1968 Koudelka extended his project to gypsy communities in Rumania and that same year recorded the invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact armies. Smuggled out of the country with the help of Czech curator Anna Farova and published with the initials P.P. ( Prague photographer) to protect his family, the highly dramatic pictures showing Russian tanks rolling into Prague and the Czech resistance became international symbols and won him the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal………more

As a member of The Magnum Photo Agency he is already considered one of the greats alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa etc. This link is a short film about his work of the Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 from the Magnum in Motion series

Further information can be found in this excellent Guardian interview with Koudelka in 2008

Koudelka is a photographer whose work is impossible to ignore because each image throws up so many stories, as you look at a picture and start to try to understand the reasons why the shutter was released at that moment a range of emotions, expectations and ideas come to you. His work is rarely decorative, it is always demanding and about difficult subjects. In some ways the early work of Oxford photographer Paddy Summerfield reminds me of Koudelka, Paddy’s early work is on permanent exhibition in the reception area of the Old Bank Hotel on the High Street in Oxford. Paddy is a reluctant interwebber so although he is often mentioned he no longer has his own site but this might give you some idea of his work

The hope is that with these occasional introductions you will find someone whose work you are absorbed by and undertake further investigations or maybe even go and buy a book

Capa In Color

Here from the pages of Faded+Blurred is a review of a new book about Robert Capa

Until recently, I had no idea that iconic photojournalist and co-founder ofMagnum Photos, Robert Capa shot anything in color. Like many of you, I knew him mainly for The Magnificent Eleven, his gritty black & white war photos taken on D-Day at Omaha Beach. Capa actually covered five wars over the course of his career and according to Cynthia Young, curator of the Capa in Color exhibition currently at the International Center of Photography in NYC regularly shot in both black & white and color. “Capa’s talent with black-and-white film was extraordinary, and starting color film halfway through his career required a new discipline, but it also opened up new opportunities,” she says. ”He really had two cameras around his neck at all times — three even, often in two different formats.”  READ MORE?

The Vatican City by David Seymour

Magnum Photos, the famous photographers agency and picture library, regularly sends out selections of images that might be used in editorial articles. The latest to land on our desk is by David “Chim” Seymour, one of the founder members of Magnum along with Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and Robert Capa

This picture essay is from the Vatican in 1949

All pictures by David Seymour, Magnum

See all 25 in the essay here

5 Great War Photographers

Here at OSP Towers we try to bring you a varied diet of equipment news, tutorials and great photography. As part of that we feature photographers we think you should be interested in. We have covered war photographers occasionally because they have always had such an impact on our understanding of the suffering handed out by those who wage war and what atrocities our governments undertake in our names for the sake generally of the need for hydrocarbons. Anyway this article by those good people at Lightstalking gives you a brief insight into 5 of the greatest war photographers. Don McCullin ( we featured him here), James Natchwey (we featured him here), George Silk, Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White (who we featured here)

Don McCullin – Nikon F by martsharm, on Flickr

This is what Lightstalking has to say:

In any profession, there are wild pioneers who do things that others won’t do and go places that others won’t go. In photography, we have quite a few of these individuals. But some stand out from the crowd. Some go where nobody sane would even consider. And they come back with the shots that we all say, “hey, I wish I could have taken that.” War photographers especially are a special lot. Their stories and their photographs make and shape history. But let’s face it – some of these heroes are simply fearlessly insane to go where they go and do what they do with the almost certain danger of great physical harm that they accept as part of the job. Thank god for these folks. Here are some of our favourites….….MORE

Click Here: 5 of the Craziest War Photographers to Ever Cash a Paycheck

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century – 30 June—2 October 2011

Everyone who has seen this has reported back that it is an excellent and unmissable exhibition.

Brassaï, Robert Capa, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy and Martin Munkácsi each left Hungary to make their names in Germany, France and the USA, and are now known for the profound changes they brought about in photojournalism, as well as abstract, fashion and art photography. At The RA London

More information here

10 Famous Pictures From Around The World

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community. In creating propaganda, people will focus on a specific set of facts that will elicit an emotional reaction in a population. If angered, humans will often overlook rational information. In the history of photography, thousands of famous images have been taken. Governments have popularized many of these pictures as a form of propaganda. Photographs give the human brain an opportunity to interpret a specific environment. This article is going to examine ten famous photographs and their remarkable stories.….more

I chose these two to illustrate this article because of the symmetry of the guns, nice juxtaposition

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century – review

Another reason for visiting London this summer is the exhibition of Hungarian photography at the Royal Academy, here is a review of the exhibition from the Guardian/Observer by Laura Cumming

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century explores the legacy of innovative Hungarian photographers from Brassaï to Robert Capa – pioneers of photojournalism, fashion photography and surrealism. At the Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 2 October

“Eyewitness, the Royal Academy’s first foray into photography in almost a generation, turns out to have been worth the wait. The show is a revelation from beginning to end. It presents nothing less than the dark and convulsive story of Hungary during the 20th century as experienced by its citizens, and viewed by its artists, who happen to include five of the world’s greatest photographers – Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy and Munkácsi.

Nobody could fail to be struck by that fact, in room after room of famous images. That they were all Hungarians may even come as news. Each was Jewish and each changed his name at some stage, either at home or in exile. Brassaï (born Gyula Halász), who was badly wounded fighting for Hungary in the first world war and nearly died of typhoid as a prisoner of the Romanians, left for Paris in 1924. His images of its streets and bars in rain and fog, and especially in the low glow of night, inflect our whole sense of that city.”.…more

Wedding, Budapest, 1965 by László Fejes, which, with its depiction of bullet holes in the wall, led to Fejes being banned from publishing his photographs. Photograph: Hungarian Museum of Photography

Martin Munkácsi, Four Boys at Lake Tanganyika, c 1930

Ernö Vadas, Procession, Budapest, 1934 Photograph: Hungarian Museum of Photography

André Kertész, Brassaï, Capa: Hungarian photography – in pictures

Top photographers inspiational tips

From the Photoshelter site the thoughts and words from 8 top professional photographers, inspirational and worthwhile if you follow their advice

Eight top professional photographers reveal their insight into finding inspiration. Our free handbook links to video interviews with each photographer, including: Corey Rich, Tim Mantoani, Scott Strrazzante, Ami Vitale, Casey Templeton, Robert Seale, Brian Peterson, and Michael Schwarz.

What’s Inside?

Finding inspiration for your work is a lifelong pursuit. For photographers, the challenge can be more significant since our job as visual storytellers is a creative one. Uncovering sources of inspiration can be challenging, and that difficulty is compounded by the daily grind of our work and home life. Each photographer covers a different topic on various aspects of inspiration. A brief synopsis of their thoughts are provided along side a “top 10” list of items that they feel are important.

What You’ll Learn:

Inspiration sometimes strikes at random, but top notch pros cultivate their own inspiration, and engage in activities that keep them fresh and inspired. Watch the compendium of videos or read the handbook for each photographer’s quick tips. Inspiration is just a click away!

photoshelter-inspiration-handbook

I thought I would find some inspiration photos for you so typed that into google, what a surprising load of rubbish so here are some from the greatest photographers ever

William Eggleston

Robert “If your pictures aren’t good enough you aren’t close enough” Capa

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sabastiao Salgado