Product Description

Here the photographers of Magnum, 50 years after the legendary group began its documentary mission, address the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; a period which has seen the triumph of US capitalism at one extreme and the resurgence of ancient blood feuds at the other. The book is built around photo-essays selected and introduced by the photographers, many shot especially for the book. From Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum's newest recruits, each photographer navigates the issues of history in their own way - some tackling the dramatic changes in the world head-on in the traditional manner of the "concerned photographer", others choosing subjects and aesthetic viewpoints which are entirely personal. The result is an album of contemporary photography about the world today. "Magnum" is introduced by historian, broadcaster and cultural commentator Michael Ignatieff, linking the substance and pace of change in the post-Cold-war world with the historic role of the Magnum witness and image-maker. This is a book about history and humanity, journalism and art, and revealing the photographers of Magnum entering a new era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87389 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 536 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A 1947 lunch meeting of four friends proved to be one of the most auspicious dates in the history of photojournalism. For it was around a lunch table that day that Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour--each recently returned from covering World War II and its aftermath--formed the Magnum photo agency. Since then Magnum photographers, with their singular knack for capturing history in an instant, have been responsible for creating many of the most iconic images of our world, in both war and peace. Magnum is a selection of agency photos that illustrate the range of subject-matter and imagery that the photographers have captured over the last half century.

The book, which overflows with photographs and includes only the briefest amount of text, is arranged thematically to effectively highlight the wide scope of images even within a narrow field. In "Middle East," Larry Towell captured boys playing in Gaza while Micha Bar-Am trained his camera on a Jewish man, wrapped in a prayer shawl fleeing a smoke bomb in Jerusalem. In "India", in the town of Benares, Ferdinando Scianna snapped photos of an excruciatingly thin man carrying his dead daughter and two nicely-dressed young girls frolicking in the water. In "Religion", photographer Abbas trained his lens both on a man re-enacting the Crucifixion in the Philippines and a woman being physically moved by the Holy Spirit in a rural Georgia church. As some of the themes--"Refugees", "Child Victims", "In the Camps", "War in Africa"--suggest, many of the images here are powerfully disturbing, while others, particularly those collected under the headings "Trees", "Fishing" and "Architecture" are lyrically beautiful. Still others, like Martin Parr's photographs of tourists on vacation the world over are witty and comic. Taken together, the thousand or so photos here capture the often surprising, always complex nature of humanity and do justice to the agency founders' original intention to "document the world as it really is." --Jordana Moskowitz

Customer Reviews

Stunning
Whenever something life-altering, upheaving, or historically significant happens, wherever in in the world, it is covered by the Magnum photographers. To me, and it is a very personal opinion from someone who dreamt of being part of this agency, Magnum represents -the- best documentary photography work in the history of the medium. This is breathtaking beauty and horror, disturbing and witty, funny and revealing, and it truly makes the hair on your arms stand on end. In fact, as I write this review, I feel that tingle down my spine. It is splendid.

The technical precision is one thing, and these are indeed the best documentary photographers in the world, but it is not the resolution or the technical quality of the images, it is the messages they convey, the pieces of history frozen in time, the eerie precision with which some of the most extraordinary events have been captured. I can not describe it better, but only urge you to take part of this stunning collection of work.

Capturing todays world through a lens
Everybody slightly interested in photography knows about Magnum, this legenday group of photojournalist. Names like Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and today James Nachtwey risked their lives to capture the history in an instant.

I saw the exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London when the book was first released. It captures only the 1990-ies but you will be amazed when you see all these pictures to try to grasp the magnitude of what has happened in that time. All the cruelty that goes on in the world, all the poor and hungry people and all the fightings and wars. These photographers risk their lives to document all of this and try to convey a message through to all of us who can't or won't be there - helping us to understand this complex world.

Buy this book to get a better understanding of the world and read it as a document over what is going on.

The eye of the world
I saw the Magnum exhibition in London, and was taken aback by the beauty or the horror, sometimes both, of the pictures. Some of them are so real they become disturbing. The collection is an eye-opener, far from voyeurism, truly a witness of a side of our modern world we often happily forget about.

The book is superb, the print of very high quality. The introduction by Ignatieff is sensible and objective, and the pictures are there forever, staring back at you.