The Magnum Digest: February 7, 2020
Olivia Arthur in i-D's top Instagram accounts, a major upcoming exhibition explores masculinity, Bruno Barbey's technical approach to photographing China, plus more
Olivia Arthur in i-D’s list of Instagram profiles to follow
Olivia Arthur has been selected in i-D’s 20 documentary photographers to follow on Instagram – the photographers, whom they describe as “gritty, witty and big-hearted recorders of real life” may provide more meaningful content for social media feeds. Describing her series In Private/Mumbai, the platform described it as “captur[ing] tiny, beautiful moments of solitude amid the maelstrom of Mumbai.”
See the full list of artists here. Read more about In Private/Mumbai here.
Ekow Eshun on forthcoming exhibition, Masculinities, for the Financial Times
A soon-to-open exhibition at the London’s Barbican Centre features Thomas Dworzak’s found series of Taliban portraits as well as early work from around the UK by Peter Marlow. The exhibition, titled Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, explores photographic representation of gender through the lens of geographic cultures, sexuality, race, and more. Ekow Eshun, who was an advisor to the show, has written an essay for the Financial Times shedding light on how it came together – read it here.
Bruno Barbey on photographing China
In an interview with Canon, Bruno Barbey discussed the reasons he has been drawn to photographing the state described as a “foremost industrial superpower”. The photographer details his approach to chronicling cultural and material changes that have taken place in China over four decades of working there, the distinctiveness of his work in color, and the advantages offered by modern equipment.
Read the Canon feature here, and see more of Barbey’s images from his book, The Color of China, here.
Philippe Halsman’s contact sheet on Observer
In conjunction with ‘PROOF’, a new exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Observer has published a piece on the art of the contact sheet, both as a valued collector’s item and source of insight into photographers’ technical practices. Philippe Halsman’s contact sheet print of a glamorous Marilyn Monroe at home features in the exhibition and article. The feature quotes Elliott Erwitt: “A dozen contact sheets tell far more about a photographer than a dozen ‘good’ pictures taken by that same photographer.”
Read more here. See articles from Magnum’s series unpacking the story of seminal images from the archive through their contact sheets here.
Bruce Davidson on The Guardian
The Guardian has featured a series of Bruce Davidson’s photographs from Britain in 1960, in time for his exhibition which is currently on display at the Huxley Parlour Gallery in London. The Magnum photographer went on assignment for Queen magazine to create a profile of the culture and customs of a broad-ranging cross-section of the country in the post-war period. See the images here.
Numero features Susan Meiselas exhibition
An article in Numero provides an introduction to, and a selection of images from, the bodies of work featured in Susan Meiselas’ exhibition, Mediations, currently on display in Sao Paulo. The retrospective spans projects from the 1970s to the present day bringing together her work from Nicaragua, Kurdistan, her projects Carnival Strippers, Prince Street Girls, and more. See the article, in French, here.
Magnum photographers at PHOTO 2020 in Australia
Cristina de Middel, Sim Chi Yin, Nanna Heitmann, Martin Parr, and Alec Soth have their work featured in the PHOTO 2020 biennale, a new photography festival held in venues across Melbourne and Victoria. Broadsheet has published a look into the photographers you can expect to see at the biennale – read it here.
Find a list of Magnum’s upcoming activities at PHOTO 2020, here.
