The founder of Firecracker and Global Business Development Manager of Magnum Photos picks out her top five of 2017 – including Megan Doherty’s Instagram feed
The founder of Firecracker and Global Business Development Manager of Magnum Photos picks out her top five of 2017 – including Megan Doherty’s Instagram feed
It’s a commendable milestone by anyone’s standards – for 70 years, Magnum Photos has been at the forefront of documentary photography, photojournalism and visual storytelling, its members reporting on conflicts, crises and changes for humanity the world over. To celebrate Magnum’s long and rich history, the agency has devised Magnum Retold, a huge group project in which current members revisit stories by their predecessors. Photographers were invited to respond to an archival story that had influenced or inspired their practice in some way – a story that meant something to them personally, or a topical subject they wished to revisit. “There is a repository of amazing work, which is the 70-year-old legacy of these incredible photographers,” explains Magnum’s content director, Francesca Sears.
“When you go out into the landscape, frankly if you’re saying I think this a wonderful landscape and you take a picture, why didn’t you buy a postcard?” says David Hurn, in an interview with Christopher Frayling published in his new book, Arizona Trips.
“The people that do postcards have spent more time, they know the light and they get it right,” he adds. “It just doesn’t interest me that much.” His shots of Arizona, which he photographed for 20 years, do something very different, focusing instead on the locals and on their interventions on the natural world in the southwestern US state. From billboards in the desert to paper cups protecting cactus plants from frost, and from rodeo events to Dolly Parton lookalike contests, his is a distinctly anthropocentric, gently humorous, look at life in the southwestern US state.
Why should photographers enter competitions? Fiona Rogers from Magnum, one of the judges of the International Photography Award 2018, weighs in
Born in Washington DC in 1981, Peter van Agtmael studied history at Yale before moving into documentary photography. Largely focusing on America, his work considers issues such as power, race and class; he also works on the Israel/Palestine conflict and throughout the Middle East.
Magnum photographers share the stories behind their selected images for the Magnum Square Print Sale
Illuminating India: Photography 1857-2017, is the first exhibition to document the history of photography in India, and includes both archive and contemporary work. It includes images by India’s first known photographer Ahmad Ali Khan, pioneering art photographer Marahaja Ram Singh II, the country’s first female photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla; and award-winning contemporary photographers such Magnum’s Sohrab Hura. It also includes images of India taken by non-Indians, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Werner Bischof, Margaret Bourke White, Lucien Hervé, Mitch Epstein, Vasantha Yogananthan, and Olivia Arthur.
In the latest book from Jonas Bendiksen, the Norwegian photographer takes us on a global journey of spiritual exploration, seen through the worldview of seven fascinating individuals who literally believe themselves to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It’s an expansive and sumptuously designed book of more than 140 photographs and several thousand words of accompanying textual scriptures, co-published by GOST and Aperture. In it, Bendiksen portrays himself as a photographic apostle, asking why the Bible story of a returning Messiah has remained so potent. “My approach here was to ask, who is this person and who are their followers,” he explains. “By immersing myself in their revelations and spending time with their disciples, I’ve tried to produce images that illustrate the human longing for faith, meaning, and salvation.”