The Magnum Digest: January 10, 2020
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s China photographs in The Guardian, Eve Arnold’s Misfits in the Financial Times, and Magnum’s street photography book in Feature Shoot
Cartier-Bresson’s China work featured on The Guardian
In 1948 Henri Cartier-Bresson went on assignment for LIFE Magazine to document the fall of China’s Nationalist Party and “the last days of Beijing”. He returned to the country ten years later to report on a decade’s changes in the context of political, economic and social upheavals. The series of photographs from 1948-49 and 1958 will show at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson until February 9, 2020.
See The Guardian‘s piece here. Read more information about the exhibition here.
Eve Arnold’s photographs from the set of The Misfits in the FT Weekend Magazine
The Financial Times has published Eve Arnold’s images of Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits in the photography special of its FT Weekend Magazine. The movie was to be the last that the star performed in before her death. The magazine’s deputy photo editor John Hustig wrote, “Arnold’s photographs are striking for the way she captures these legends of the silver screen as lonely, troubled individuals. She strips away their movie stardom and reveals them as fragile, vulnerable.” Read the piece here.
See an expanded selection of images from the story and read Magnum’s own coverage, which touches on Monroe’s legacy as well as Arnold’s working process over the two months she followed the film’s cast and crew, here.
Magnum Streetwise on Feature Shoot
Feature Shoot has reviewed the book Magnum Streetwise, a collection of the agency’s street photography over seven-plus decades, published last year by Thames & Hudson. Writer of the feature, Miss Rosen, explained why the street proves fertile ground for photography: “[It] is the space where anything can happen, where fact is stranger than fiction. […] It is the perfect place for a photographer willing to hone their reflexes and test their skills, moments composing themselves without warning, disappearing just as quickly.” You can read the piece here.
Read an extract from the book’s introduction, on Magnum, here. Read a reflection by Magnum’s US Cultural Director, Pauline Vermare, on the collective’s history within the street photography genre, here, and find out more about Magnum’s first online education course, The Art of Street Photography, here.
