Martin Fuchs is a freelance photographer based in Vienna, Austria. Fuchs has been working as a freelance editor, producer and designer for Magnum Photos since 2005. Fuchs also specializes in websites and blogs. He created the "Magnum Blog," his personal blog "Journal Of A Photographer" and a variety of other photography related websites. In July 2007 he started to take over the editorial responsibilities for the Magnum Blog.
Be prepared to make your best First Impression at this unique portfolio review with Magnum photographers.
First Impressions will provide keen amateurs and emerging professionals wishing to take the next logical step in their careers with an honest evaluation and critical analysis of their photographic work. Reviews will be 20 minutes each with a 5-minute changeover period. Each participant will be reviewed by 3 different Magnum photographers and you will be able to state your preference of reviewer in the application process (review organisers reserve the right to allocate the times of each session). Reviewers will be Christopher Anderson, Stuart Franklin, David Alan Harvey, Costantine Manos, Susan Meiselas, Mark Power, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Larry Towell, Alex Webb and Donovan Wylie.
After our live interviews with Bruce Gilden, Larry Towell and Peter van Agtmael on Twitter we have another exciting Twitterview coming up this Thursday.
Paul Fusco will take your questions for an hour. Check out his Portfolio page, his moving Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy", "Bitter Fruit" or any of his major features and prepare some questions. Make sure to use #fusco somewhere in your Twitter message as this is the only way for us to see your questions.
The June 15 deadline for the for the 2009 Young Photographer in the Caucasus Award from the Magnum Foundation is not far away. The Award, with a $5000 first prize, recognizes outstanding documentary photography on a matter of social importance by a young photographer living in the Caucasus region.
Eligibility
The Award program is open to all photographers born after June 1, 1975, living in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Republics of the North Caucasus in the Russian Federation (Daghestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North-Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karatshaevo-Tsherkessia, and Adigey Republic) and the Russian Federation regions of Stavropol Krai and Krasnodar. Existing United Nations standards on nationality and borders will be utilized for purposes of determining eligibility.
Submission Requirements
Applicants must submit up to twenty (20) images from a single documentary project situated in the Caucasus (as described above) in digital format, together with a one-page written statement (in English, French, or Russian) describing the project and providing a short biography and the contact information of the photographer.
All entries must be submitted using this form or sent to the Magnum Foundation, c/o Magnum Photos, 19 rue Hegesippe Moreau, 75018 Paris, France, and received by June 15, 2009. Please note « Caucasus Award » on the envelope.
Judging
A short-list of entries will be reviewed by a jury composed of the members of Magnum Photos in late June 2009. The jury will propose a winner and two honorable mention recipients to be confirmed by the Board of Directors of the Magnum Foundation. The winner and honorable mention recipients will be notified by the Magnum Foundation by telephone or email and will be publicly announced at an awards ceremony in Tbilisi, Georgia, on September 19, 2009.
Award
In addition to the $5000 first prize to support an ongoing documentary project, the winner will receive a statute presented by a Magnum photographer at an awards ceremony held in Tbilisi, Georgia, on September 19, 2009.
The portfolios submitted by the winner and honorable mention recipients also will be featured on the Magnum Foundation’s website and projected at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, and at an R.I.P. Arles-Tbilisi event in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Mr. Jackanory (Andrew Hetherington) recently visited Alec Soth's studio in Saint Paul, Minnesota to film the fourth episode of his "inside the photographers_studio" series. Originally posted on Whats the Jackanory.
UPDATE:Voting has now ended for the contest. We will tally the votes and announce the results tomorrow afternoon, 21 April 2009. Thank you to everyone that participated.
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The three finalists of our first photo editing contest are in. The criteria for the contest was to make an edit of 10-14 images based on the following quote:
"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." - Oscar Wilde.
Our panel of Magnum photographers and staff members selected the edits of Chuck Fowler, Michael Fazio and Raabia Wazir as our finalists. Now it's up to you to vote for the winner. The winner will receive an amazing set of vintage Magnum poster prints, including one signed by the legendary Elliott Erwitt.
Take a look at the edits and vote for your favorite. Voting will close at 12noon EDT, Monday April 20th 2009.
The photographer Elliott Erwitt. Photograph by Marion Wedekind. 1991
UPDATE: Contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone that entered. We will post the results next week and the finalist will be notified.
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It's time for a new competition on the Magnum Blog! This time, we ask you to be a photo editor. The competition's theme is a quote and we want you to dig into our archive and create an edit of 10 to 14 images that illustrate the following quote.
"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." - Oscar Wilde
Think about sequencing, about the flow of your edit, about what it says and how it illustrates Oscar Wilde's quote. Be creative, give your best. The final winner will receive an amazing set of vintage Magnum poster prints, including one signed by the legendary Elliott Erwitt.
Once you are sure about your edit go to this form, enter your Name, your E-Mail address and the image numbers of your edit in the order you would like them to appear. (Image numbers appear to the right of the image in the following format: PAR12345, NYC12345, LON12345, etc.)
The deadline for your entries is Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12pm EDT.
A group of Magnum photographers and staff will then select the three best and most creative of your edits. We will feature those three finalists on the blog and our blog viewers (yeah, that is you, you and you) will be able to vote on their favorites. The edit with the most votes will win the prize.
It's as simple as that, it's fun and a good practice for your editing skills. Start editing now!
After our first two live interviews with Bruce Gilden and Larry Towell on Twitter we have yet another exciting Twitterview coming up on Monday. Peter van Agtmael agreed to stop by the Magnum New York office on Monday to chat with you and answer your questions. The time for the Question & Answer session is 12pm EDT.
This time around we introduce a fancy new feature to these live chats with our photographers. You'll be able to ask your questions via Twitter and receive your answers via Twitter. Business as usual... But what about people who do not use Twitter? Are they left out? Not any longer!
The Twitterview will be broadcasted live and direct on the Magnum Blog too. As soon as the live session starts questions and answers from Twitter will show up in a special chat window on the blog in real time. Blog users can ask their questions by typing them into a text field and Peter will reply to them directly as well. Start preparing your questions! You can see the chat area that we prepared after clicking the continue reading link.
Larry Towell twittering in the Magnum NY office. Photograph taken by Meagan Young
I have to apologize, when posting the announcement about our live Question & Answer session with Larry Towell on Twitter I actually posted the wrong date. The Twitterview was yesterday and not today. I'll make sure to announce the right date the next time around. In the meantime here is the transcript of the conversation with Larry.
For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based post of up to 140 characters.
Basically it's a communication tool that gets more and more popular. Live Question & Answers with Magnum photographers on Twitter allow you to ask precise and short questions and get answers right away. The @ sign signals a reply to that user.
@magnumphotos Hi Larry - is there anything about being associated with Magnum that you feel negatively about? @michaelbel In life in general it's hard to be in cooperative where everyone has equal say and share, it's a creative tension.
@magnumphotos Hi! you always take field recordings when you travel-how important do you think it is for photographers to embrace multimedia? @thefrook In this day and age it's critical if you want to participate in the issues of our day online, I also find it liberating
@magnumphotos what inpired you to become a photographer and which have been the influences in your life? @AdrianArias The subjects have been my influences , what inspired me was first person experience in Central America in the '80s
@magnumphotos what is documentary photography for you? @AdrianArias It's my own engagement with the people and places I place myself as a freelancer
Larry Towell arrived in New York today and we thought you might have a couple of questions to ask him. After our first live Question & Answer with Bruce Gilden on Twitter last week we'll have the next Q&A with Larry Towell tomorrow.
Make sure to check out Larry's photographs on his portfolio page, his major features and his Magnum In Motion essays. By the way... Did you know that Larry Towell is a musician as well? So think about your questions, if you are not mean they'll get answered for sure.
Because our Twitter contest was so much fun but over way too fast, Erich Lessing signed another Herbert Von Karajan book (which comes with two music CDs) that we'll give away on the blog. The first person to answer the following five questions correctly will win the book. All answers can be found in various areas on the Magnum websites. Please post your answers as comments, when posting links please always use TinyUrl to shorten them.
1. Where did Erich Lessing receive his first camera?
2. Who can be seen speaking to a crowd in this photograph?
3. Which award did Lessing win in 1976?
4. In which town or city was this photograph taken?
5. Which other exhibition is Erich Lessing currently part of?
If you don't happen to be the lucky winner, signed copies of the book are available at Lessing's current "Herbert von Karajan" exhibition at the Leica Gallery in New York. The exhibition is up until April 18, 2009.
Update:
The competition is over and the winner is Joseph L Harris. Congratulations, we hope you'll enjoy the book and CDs!
Erich Lessing live and direct from the Magnum New York office. Photograph taken this morning by James Wendell
As you might have noticed Magnum is on Twitter and our staff is twittering away at the moment. After yesterday's first and live Twitter Q&A with Bruce Gilden we are about to have our first Twitter contest up in a few minutes!
You can win a signed book by Erich Lessing with photographs of Herbert Von Karajan and 2 music CDs.
We will tweet 5 obscure questions about Erich Lessing, the first person to answer all of them correctly will win the signed book. Go there now!
Update:
The contest is over and the winner of the book and the CD's is "pics_by_mac". Congratulations!
It clearly is award time at the moment. After announcing Burn Magazine's grant within the last two weeks, here is yet another one:
The Magnum Expression Photography Award was established by Magnum Photos and HP with the goal of raising awareness and inspiring change through campaigns using photography as an expressive medium. Its mission is to discover and illuminate compelling documentary photography employed in innovative ways to affect social awareness and propel humanitarian compassion.
The inaugural theme for the award is Communities.
A sense of community is at the core of our lives, in some cases it unites us and in others it divides us from one another. This universal force is omnipresent in humankind and our diverse forms of expression, from acts of benevolence and kindness to movements of oppression and isolation. Each manifestation of human action has its causes and effects, its beneficiaries or victims. These impulses and actions are shaped by our individual identities and reflect our collective spirit. The judges urge participants to embrace the theme of communities and consider the expansive nature of how it pervades our lives and affects our perceptions. Participants' submissions may be for a completed project or one that is ongoing.
Criteria for Evaluation
» Excellence & inventiveness in building a photographic narrative.
» Singularity of vision and compassion for the subjects.
» Ability to produce a thought-provoking visual presentation.
The Jury and Awards
A panel of four Magnum photographers (Alec Soth, Jonas Bendiksen, Paolo Pellegrin and Susan Meiselas) and one HP large format printing representative will select 20 finalists. One chosen winner will receive a $10,000 grant to support the continuation of his/her work, HP’s large format Designjet Z3200 for fine art printing, archival pigment inks, fine art paper and additional prizes from contributing partners Blurb & PhotoShelter.
Two honorable mentions and the remaining 17 finalists will also receive awards to support & encourage their photographic work. Participation is at no cost and photographers worldwide are encouraged to submit.
Timeline for Submissions
» March 16th - Gallery submissions open
» May 31st - Final submission acceptance
» June 2009 - Jury review and award recipient selection
Jörg Colberg: I don't know whether one would have the same impression living in South Africa, but looking from the outside - and from far away - it seems like South Africa had such a bright moment of hope when apartheid was dismantled and when Nelson Mandela was elected President, and so much has gone wrong since then, for whatever reason. Do you see it as your responsibility (if that's a word you'd be comfortable with) to record what's going on? To preserve this moment in time, maybe to foster some awareness and change?
Mikhael Subotzky: I am not sure if I believe that photographers can effectively take responsibility for such things. I do believe in the power of bearing witness, but I see it more as responsibility to ourselves - that we each have a responsibility to try and make ourselves as conscious as possible. Looking at the world around me through photography has become my way of doing that. While I am very happy that I can share images with others and try and show them things that they haven't taken in, that isn't the primary motivation for doing what I do.
"This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can." - Barack Obama
Photo-Eye recently published a list of the Best Photobooks of 2008. Photographers, publishers, editors, writers, critics and publications have been asked to share their picks for the top 10 (or so). Alec Soth and Martin Parr have been among those asked. Here are their favorites from 2008.
Alec Soth:
New York, N. Why? by Rudolph Burkhardt and Edwin Denby. Photography and poetry almost never work well next to each other, but this breezy little album (originally produced in 1938) makes me really happy.
The Solitude of Ravens. Photographs by Masahisa Fukase. One of my favorite books of all time finally gets some good packaging.
Wake by Adam Jeppesen. A quiet little poem (just wish the pictures didn’t keep falling into the gutter).
Baghdad Calling. Photography by Geert Van Kesteren. Largely made up of amateur pictures, this book is all about falling into the gutter.
Seneca Ghosts. Photographs by Danielle Mericle. If you look closely, this tiny book packs a punch.
Beyond the Forest. Photographs by Clare Richardson. Yes, I know, it came out in November of 2007, but I got it this year. A great, great book. If you want something similar from 2008 (good, but less tightly edited), check out Somerset Stories, Fivepenny Dreams by Venetia Dearden.
South East. Photographs by Mark Steinmetz. Another classic from the author of South Central.
Beaufort West. Photographs by Mikhael Subotzky. It irritates me when photographers are this good, this young (27), but there is no denying the power of this book.
Lighter. Photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans. An opportunity to relive my favorite exhibition of 2008 again and again. A huge book of installation views shouldn’t work, but Tillmans has the magic touch.
The World from My Front Porch. Photographs by Larry Towell. A lovely family album expanded into a complicated essay on the meaning of land and home.
At the halfway point along South Africa's great highway-the N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg-lies the small town of Beaufort West. With a prison in the middle of town on an island in the highway, it's a surreal road stop that offers everything a traveler might want: food, gas, a place to stay, an hour of sex. Its vivid characters and poignant social landscapes are the subject of Mikhael Subotzky's first photobook. Exquisitely designed and produced on a large portfolio scale, Beaufort West features thirty-six plates and an introduction by leading South African writer Jonny Steinberg. The book is both an important social document and the visual manifesto of the best of the new wave of South African art photographers.
In describing his Beaufort West series, Subotzky says: "Despite being originally established to bring law and order to the central Karoo, Beaufort West is now a transit town. Situated at the intersection of two of the busiest national roadways, it serves as a food and overnight stop for travelers of all kinds. Every day, the town's population doubles with those who pass through it. Beaufort West has recently been described by the South African Human Rights Commission as 'an isolated town that has not broken away from the shackles of South Africa's apartheid past, [where] economic and social integration is severely limited.' "
Subotzky continues: "I was drawn to Beaufort West when I came across its prison. It is bizarrely situated in a traffic circle in the centre of the town in the middle of the N1 highway. Most South African prisons are hidden from view on the outskirts of our towns and cities. I was interested in this image of the prison at the centre of the town and the irony that it is still hidden as most of those who drive around the traffic circle don't realize that they are passing the prison. This image thus became a locus by which to explore the town and its margins."
Beaufort West is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until January 5, 2009. For more information visit the MOMA website.
In 1968 Josef Koudelka was thirty years old. He had committed himself to photography as a full-time career only recently, and had been chronicling the theater, and the lives of gypsies, but he had never photographed a news event. That all changed on the night of August 21 when the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia along with troops from four other Warsaw Pact countries in the morning hours. The occupation was the beginning of the end for the Czechoslovak reform movement known as the Prague Spring. That day, Koudelka was at the hub of the action, risking his life to capture the photographs now presented in a new book by Aperture. They have been rated among the most important in 21st-century photojournalism. A year after the invasion, Josef Koudelka’s negatives were smuggled out of Prague into the hands of Magnum, and published anonymously in The Sunday Times Magazine under the initials P P – Prague Photographer.
Koudelka crouched on the roof of a building in Wenceslas Square, Prague, his camera lens trained on the street below. Thousands of Soviet troops rumbled past in tanks – the city was being invaded. Below him, houses and buses were ablaze, bullets were flying and the wounded cried out. Protesters chanted the name of their hero, the Czech president Alexander Dubcek. Some threw stones at the troops. Others pleaded with the soldiers, begging them to go home. One man simply stood before a tank, silently opened his jacket and defied the soldiers to shoot him in the chest.
Snapping away, Koudelka almost didn’t notice the people waving and pointing at him, or the Russian soldiers shouting, assuming he was a sniper. Suddenly a group of Soviet soldiers charged into the building he was perching on and gave chase. He fled, his Leica swinging round his neck, scrambling and ducking over rooftops, through a window and down into the throng on the street.
In 1969 the "anonymous Czech photographer" was presented with the Robert Capa gold medal for photographs requiring exceptional courage. It was feared that publishing Koudelka’s name could endanger his life. With Magnum to recommend him to the British authorities, he applied for a three-month working visa and fled to England in 1970, where he stayed for more than a decade. Since then he has traveled the world with his camera and little else.
Book Discount
There is a beautiful new book with this body of work out now. We are offering a 10% discount on the book's price from the Magnum Store for each and every reader of the blog who orders the book. With this discount you only pay $ 54 instead of $ 60 plus shipping. If you are in New York you could even pick up your copy of the book after ordering at the Magnum office and you'd save the shipping cost.
If you want to order and would like to take advantage of the discount please use KOUDELKA as the Redemption Code during the checkout process. If you do not use this code we can not give a discount anymore once the ordering process is completed!
"While Fashion Magazine has a single photographer-author, it's still a magazine, not a book. So it doesn't follow my usual mode of slow, solitary production. It's collaboration. The ideas for the collaboration were formulated very quickly. I was approached by the folks at the Paris office of Magnum to work on this issue late last year. I immediately said yes. I was a huge fan of the previous two editions (by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) and was looking for an excuse to play with fashion . I often say that when I am making a portrait, I'm not "capturing" the other person. If the photograph documents anything, it is the space between the subject and myself. Something similar is at work with Fashion Magazine. I'm not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us. My favorite example of this involves Chanel. In Paris, I photographed Karl Lagerfeld at the Grand Palais. In Minnesota, I photographed a girl with a Chanel shopping bag in front of Sally's Beauty Shop. With this magazine, I'm trying to explore the distance between those two places." Alec Soth
Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world, with more than one quarter of its population infected. Some 130,000 children have been orphaned or made vulnerable by the death of one or both of their parents. With so many infected, AIDS is impacting every aspect of life in Swaziland.
A week ago, during the 61st Annual General Meeting of Magnum, two new nominees were welcomed into the circle of Magnum Photographers. Once a year, the photographers from Magnum travel to Paris, London or New York for their Annual General Meeting (AGM). The 2008 AGM took place at the end of June in Paris. One day of the AGM is reserved to look at submitted portfolios and to decide upon new nominees, associates and members.
English photographer Olivia Arthur (28) and American-Dutch photographer Peter van Agtmael (27) are the new nominees for 2008.
I briefly e-mailed with them to find out about their motivation to join Magnum and how it felt to be notified of their acceptance. Please post your comments or questions and we will try to find responses and answers to them by our nominees.
For the past two years I have been working on a long-term project about women and the east-west cultural divide. This has been mainly funded though scholarships and grants and I have done relatively little commissioned work.
The motivation for the project is very personal and because of the way I have been working on it, I have had very few guidelines and conditions to follow. This freedom has been amazing for me because it has meant that I have been able to get right into it and let the work unfold as it goes along. It also means that it doesn't necessarily fit into the regular format of photojournalistic stories, and it has not always been easy for me to get it seen.
I see Magnum as a place that thrives on the kind of personal approach and subtle story that I am trying to achieve. I felt that the agency has made a big move in recent years to encourage younger, lesser-known photographers, who have a strong idea of what they want to show, and that really appealed to me. I am still growing and finding my way with my photography and the idea that I can do that under the guidance of an agency like Magnum and its photographers is very special.
Of course I was also encouraged by the fact that I won the Inge Morath Award last year. That gave me the confidence that the photographers liked my work and I was keen to show them what I had done with the grant over the year since they gave it to me. It also meant that I had been in contact with a few of the photographers and was perhaps less intimidated by it than I would have been a few years ago.
The day that they had the meeting in Paris I was at home working. Thomas Dwozak sent me an sms to say congratulations and I was quite stunned, then Paolo Pellegrin called me and it eventually seemed more real. I called my boyfriend and my parents - all of whom knew what this really meant to me - and then I went out to celebrate.
I felt compelled to pick up a camera because of Magnum, and that discovery has brought great meaning and purpose to my life. I love a huge range of photography, but because of that early and continuing influence, I have always wanted to be a part of the agency. I studied history in college, and Magnum is a historical archive of incredible meaning. I feel honored to have the opportunity to begin contributing my own testimony of our troubled species. As for applying, I'm not really sure why I decided to submit at this particular moment. I felt a really strong impulse, and figured I had nothing to lose. It's hard to describe what I felt when I got the news, it was like a surge of hundreds of feelings at once, but my first articulate feeling was an understanding that my life was entering a really important new phase.
I was with my family at my aunt Marie-Louise's house in Holland when Thomas Dworzak messaged me with the news. She had died the previous week after a long battle with breast cancer, and her funeral had been the previous day. I got the news as I was photographing her son sleeping on her living room couch, while in the background my dad and uncle went through the details of her life, silhouetted by the sharp light of the setting sun. Marie-Louise was really important to me. She had been married to a very active war cameraman, and thus was intimately familiar with the toll that going to war can take on family and oneself.
She was there the day I first told my parents I was going to Iraq, a decision that has changed my life dramatically. A few hours after I broke the news, the two of us went grocery shopping. As we walked and talked, she listened to my reasons intensely, and offered short and loaded answers. She had always really understood me, and on a certain level knew that my mind was made up. Still, she stormed away a few times, condemning me for my selfishness and cursing at me in Dutch. Dutch cursing is always very impressive and intimidating. Ultimately, she supported me, and I often stay with her son Sander before or after I go to wars. The last time I saw her was after leaving Afghanistan last month. I showed her my pictures from the previous two years. She offered a stern critique, but was also very proud. She was a truly wonderful person, and it meant a lot to get the news in her house.
"What I witnessed in Mali is such a giant leap forward that only a few years ago it was just unthinkable. Working in this human landscape it’s a lot about feeling for these people and what they go through. These emotional aspects were even stronger in Kassi’s case because he was such a small and cute little kid. As it sometimes happens in life there is a strange immediate connection to somebody and in my case, of all the people in Mali that I met, it was with him and his mother. Despite the fact that we couldn’t really communicate that well - at least verbally - but I just had a great immediate sense of emotion and pathos for this young child, this young man." Paolo Pellegrin on his experience working with Kassi Keita and Mariam Dembele.
For 25 years, AIDS has ravaged the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Since the early 1980s, nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS. But over the past few years, a quiet global revolution has enabled millions of people infected by HIV to live healthy lives.
In the early 1990s, when antiretroviral drugs became available, AIDS was transformed from a certain death sentence to a manageable chronic disease–but only for some. The expense of the drugs and their distribution prevented 95 percent of those living with HIV from getting access to them. International outrage that millions were dying because of economic disparity helped reduce drug prices and to create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002. Doctors and healthcare workers around the world have adapted procedures to settings where people often could not access even the most basic care. Already, millions of lives which otherwise might have been lost are being saved.
In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Paolo Pellegrin in Mali, Alex Majoli in Russia, Larry Towell in Swaziland and South Africa, Jim Goldberg in India, Gilles Peress in Rwanda, Jonas Bendiksen in Haiti, Steve McCurry in Vietnam and Eli Reed in Peru. Here are faces, voices, and stories representing those millions of people who by now would be dead if not for access to free antiretroviral drugs–people who are living with HIV, working, caring for their children, and experiencing the joys and struggles of being alive. But there are also the stories of those for whom treatment came too late or where tuberculosis or other diseases brought their lives to an end – showing how the fight to bring access to AIDS treatment is a difficult one, often filled with setbacks as well as success.
Please visit the Access To Life website to view and listen to all stories. We very much hope you'll find this presentation interesting as well as insightful. Please help to spread the word by telling your friends about it, e-mailing them the link to the Access To Life website or by using one of our press images together with a link to the site on your website or blog.
And as always, your feedback and thoughts are very much appreciated!
Accomplished Magnum photographer Cornell Capa passed away early on the morning of May 23rd at home in New York.
Cornell Capa was born Cornell Friedmann to a Jewish family in Budapest. In 1936 he moved to Paris, where his brother Andre (Robert Capa) was working as a photojournalist. He worked as his brother's printer until 1937, then moved to New York to join the new Pix photo agency. In 1938 he began working in the Life darkroom. Soon his first photo-story - on the New York World's Fair - was published in Picture Post.
In 1946, after serving in the US Air Force, Cornell became a Life staff photographer. After his brother's death in 1954, he joined Magnum, and when David 'Chim' Seymour died in Suez in 1956 Capa took over as president of Magnum, a post he held until 1960.
Capa made an empathetic, pioneering study of mentally retarded children in 1954, and covered other social issues, such as old age in America. He also explored his own religious tradition. While working for Life, Capa made the first of several Latin American trips. These continued through the 1970s and culminated in three books, among them Farewell to Eden (1964), a study of the destruction of indigenous Amazon cultures.
Capa covered the electoral campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, among others. His 1969 book, New Breed on Wall Street, was a landmark study of a generation of ruthless young entrepreneurs keen on making money and spending it fast.
In 1974 Capa founded New York City's influential International Center of Photography, to which for many years he dedicated much of his considerable energy as its director.
Larry Towell is a photojournalist who travels reluctantly and only when the subject really matters. But if he travels he does so to really follow his subjects around for a long time, he tells a story from a very humanistic point of view adding his own unique perspective. From 1993 to 2006 he photographed in Israel and Palestine, producing an immense body of work. Two amazing books, "Then Palestine" and "No Man's Land", arose out of this work.
Initially he wished to document the birth of a nation, following the Oslo-Agreement. Instead he ended up documenting what he would later refer to as "the World's largest open-air prison". In 2001 he was given a small video camera and began to maintain a video diary while working in Israel and Palestine. In his 40 minute documentary "Indecisive Moments" - which won the "Achievement in Filmmaking for a Documentary" award at the 2007 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, also known as "the voice of indie film" - Larry Towell documents events and perspectives of those caught up in violence. The result is a highly personal documentary from the perspective of one of the world’s most acclaimed photojournalists. "Indecisive Moments" bridges the gap between artist and reporter bringing the viewer inside Towell's highly stylized world.
Ordering Discount
We are offering a 10% discount on the DVD's price from the Magnum Store for the first ten readers who order the DVD. With this discount you only pay $ 27 instead of $ 30 plus shipping. If you are in New York you could even pick up your copy of the DVD after ordering at the Magnum office and you'd save the shipping cost.
If you want to order and would like to take advantage of the discount please send me an e-mail. If you are one of the first ten you'll get a coupon code from us that you need to use in order to receive the discount. If you do not use this code we can not give a discount anymore once the ordering process is completed.
Beloved Magnum photographer, Burt Glinn, passed away early on the morning of April 9th.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Burt Glinn served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946, before studying literature at Harvard University, where he edited and photographed for the Harvard Crimson college newspaper. From 1949 to 1950, Glinn worked for Life magazine before becoming a freelancer.
Glinn became an associate member of Magnum in 1951, along with Eve Arnold and Dennis Stock - the first Americans to join the young photo agency - and a full member in 1954. He made his mark with spectacular color series on the South Seas, Japan, Russia, Mexico and California. In 1959 he received the Mathew Brady Award for Magazine Photographer of the Year from the University of Missouri.
In collaboration with the writer Laurens van der Post, Glinn published A Portrait of All the Russias and A Portrait of Japan. His reportages have appeared in Esquire, Geo, Travel and Leisure, Fortune, Life and Paris-Match. He has covered the Sinai War, the US Marine invasion of Lebanon, and Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba. In the 1990s he completed an extensive photo essay on the topic of medical science.
Versatile and technically brilliant, Glinn was one of Magnum's great corporate and advertising photographers. He had received numerous awards for his editorial and commercial photography, including the Best Book of Photographic Reporting from Abroad from the Overseas Press Club and the Best Print Ad of the Year from the Art Directors Club of New York. Glinn has served as president of the American Society of Media Photographers. He was president of Magnum between 1972 and 1975, and was re-elected to the post in 1987.
On April 4th, 1968 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while he stood on the balcony of a Memphis motel. Despite the fact that James Earl Ray had plead guilty to the murder, he spent the rest of his life trying to reverse his plea. Many theories exist which claim that Ray was not the shooter or that he was just one of many who were involved.
More than 300,000 people attended Dr. King's memorial service. Among them was Attorney General and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement who would also be assassinated two months later. Following King's death, riots broke out in more than one hundred US cities. The Vietnam War, the assassinations, US presidential elections and revolutions abroad would make 1968 one of the most painful years of the century.
After this tragic year the Civil Rights movement continued on though it had lost it's shining star. Though Dr. King was gone, the messages of this Nobel Prize winning humanitarian continues to be taught and practiced throughout the world.
Usually the Magnum Blog shouldn't be about shameless self promotion, it should offer an added value to our readers. Today however, I chose to use our blog for self promotion. Not shameless because I'd like to offer an added value or two.
First of all I'd like to introduce a book to you that was already published in 2001. Many books got lost in the deepness of a publishers warehouse and were recently found again. Secondly I'd like to offer a 25% discount on the books price in the Magnum Store to the first three blog readers who order a signed copy of it. But more on that later.
About two years ago I was lucky to be part of the process when an outstanding multimedia essay about Paul Fusco's body of work "Chernobyl Legacy" was produced at Magnum In Motion. In my humble opinion it's still one of the best, if not the best, Magnum In Motion essay that was produced. A powerful and subtle story, shown by mixing photographs, the photographers voice and diagrams and charts to transport factual information.
The essay was published right in time for the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and was picked up by a huge number of websites and blogs. Within the first week about a million people saw the essay. Tons of e-mails started to come in expressing deep sympathy with the people shown in the story, e-mails of people who wanted to donate. One of the e-mails that haunt me until today came from a mother who offered to donate all her son's birthday presents to send them off to Belarus. Her son's birthday however was only to come up in about two weeks time...
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco
If you haven't watched Paul Fusco's Chernobyl Legacy essay you should do so right away, and if you watched it already go ahead and watch it again. It's a moving and sensitive documentation of history. Certainly not suited for the fainthearted but therefore even more important to understand what happened and what's still happening.
The Book
"Chernobyl Legacy" is a 228 pages book published by the New York based multidisciplinary design firm de.Mo in 2001 and was designed by Giorgio Baravalle. The book is an amazing testimonial, a book showing extraordinary photography, incredibly well designed, it's a storytelling book.
Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, wrote in the book's foreword "The most vulnerable victims of Chernobyl were, in fact, young children or unborn babies at the moment when the reactor exploded. Their adulthood - now fast approaching - is likely to be blighted by that moment, as their childhood has been. Many will die prematurely. Are we to let them live, and die, believing the world indifferent to their plight?
We must not, and that is why this book, which movingly illustrates the Chernobyl Legacy, is so important."
Actor Michael Douglas writes "Chernobyl Legacy gives voice. Its content moves, educates and shows us why we must all become responsible to insure that what happened to Chernobyl never happens again."
I couldn't agree more with both of them. This book is one of my most favourite photography books. It's definetly not a book that you'll have fun looking at, it's not a book to quickly flip through and it's not a book to amuse your friends with. But it's a book about an important event of history, it's a deeply human book and a book that will and should start discussions. A book by a photographer that I always experienced as an extremely generous, mindful, open and helpful man. Thank you Paul Fusco!
The Discount
And as promised in the beginning we are offering a 25% discount on the books price from the Magnum Store for the first three readers who order the book. With the discount you only pay $ 112,50 instead of $ 150 plus shipping for a signed copy of "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco. If you want to order and hope for the discount please send me an e-mail. If you are one of the first three you'll get a coupon code from us that you need to use in order to receive the discount. If you do not use this code we can not give a discount anymore once the ordering process is completed.
If you are not one of the first three to order don't worry, we'll have similar special offers for signed books again in the future.
I have just updated our blog's links page once again. I added a couple of photography related blogs and a couple of journalism and photography related websites. As always, feel free to send your suggestions for inclusion in the list.
Other than that stay tuned for exciting new blog features and stories that we are currently working on and please let me know what you would really love to see here.
Pervez Musharraf came to power on October 12, 1999, ousting Nawaz Sharif, the elected Prime Minister, dismissed the national and provincial legislative assemblies, assumed the title of Chief Executive and became Pakistan's de facto head of government, thereby becoming the fourth Army chief of Pakistan to have assumed executive control. Since then, he has been actively supported by western countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. Later in 2001, Musharraf appointed himself to the office of President of Pakistan.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney yesterday announced the end of his campaign for president. Christopher Anderson followed him through the Michigan Primaries in January.
The Magnum Workshop Oslo is a five day event organized to provide maximum personal photographic growth through a combination of small, intensive, progressive shooting masterclasses with Magnum photographers, subject-specific seminars and lectures, and ample informal time allowing for cross-pollination and networking between students and instructors. All of our instructors are experienced teachers as well as masters of their craft, and are dedicated to sharing their knowledge and experiences. Students will select one of the following Magnum photographers as a workshop leader: David Alan Harvey, Paolo Pelegrin, Alex Majoli, Christopher Anderson, Jonas Bendiksen, Alessandra Sanguinetti, or Alex Webb (joined by Rebecca Norris Webb), and will also have access to all participating Workshop leaders through the week. The event is organized in collaboration with the Norwegian Press Photographer’s Association, Bilder Nordic Photography School, and the Oslo College of Photojournalism.
The Masterclasses:
Students will arrive prepared to work. Over the course of the workshop, participants will produce individual projects under the same constraints as a professional assignment, but with daily review and editing sessions within their groups. Focusing on story formation, visual literacy, and personal vision, these intimate, intensive masterclasses form the center of the Oslo Workshop. Instructors will be readily available throughout the entire process to address issues and questions that arise along the way, as well as for individual portfolio reviews. Resulting projects will be exhibited in a group show with high visibility at the end of the week at Litteraturhuset, one of Northern Europe’s most prominent cultural locales. Our on-site HP printing staff will work together with students to produce large format exhibition prints using HP’s state of the art z-3100 printers. A multimedia project about the Oslo Workshop featuring student work will be produced by Magnum in Motion and will appear on Magnum Photo’s Website.
The Festival:
Participants in the workshops also receive a festival pass for the weeklong photographic lecture series “Dok/08”, which is co-produced with the Norwegian Press Photographers Association each evening at Litteraturhuset’s auditorium in central Oslo. These evenings will bring roundtable discussions, presentations of the workshop leader’s personal work, and seminars addressing pressing issues facing photojournalism today. Speakers include our Workshop instructors, additional Magnum photographers and other luminaries from the international photographic community including leading international photo editors and innovators in multimedia. All Workshop and Festival events are held in close proximity and will spill over into intimate gatherings nightly.
Who is the Workshop aimed at?
The Oslo Workshop is aimed at photographers who are dedicated to pushing their own personal photographic boundaries. This includes both professional and amateur photographers, but requires participants to arrive ready to work and to take their photography to a new level.
More information regarding requirements, accomodation and how to register for the workshop can be found on our workshop site. Spaces are filling up quickly...
We'll end the first year of the Magnum Blog with some New Year's Eve impressions by Bruce Gilden. We wish you a healthy, peaceful and happy New Year! Thank's a lot for your support during 2007! And here is a link to our Happy New Year wishes from Magnum In Motion.
Any exciting New Year's wishes out there that you'd like to share?
LIFE Magazine, created by TIME founder Henry Luce, published its first issue on November 23, 1936. That was exactly 71 years ago.
LIFE always set standards in photojournalism, until 1972 it was published weekly when it was unfortunately shut down. Six years later, in 1978 LIFE was published again. This time as a monthly magazine and according to Dirck Halstead, who wrote a very interesting article entitled The Last of LIFE, "it was a pale imitation of its former self". The monthly magazine was discontinued in 2000 only to be published again as a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to April 2007.
I did miss the glory days of LIFE magazine but its spirit and the work of some of the greatest photographers in the world who photographed for LIFE shall not be forgotten. This one goes out to the old LIFE magazine.
Nikos Economopoulos is a Magnum photographers who's work I really, really dig. Frankly, I am under the impression that his work doesn't get the attention it deserves by the photo community out there. Well, it's a bit hard to find more information on Nikos Economopoulos and his work outside of the Magnum website. I found an interesting article by Frank Viviano called "The Balkan Tribe" in which he also talks about him. And I found out that Nikos has his own workshop series "On The Road" which I didn't know about until recently.
So far I never had the chance to meet him but I truly hope that I'll soon be able to have a little conversation with him for the Magnum Blog. Until then you should really look at his books "Economopoulos, Photographer" or "The Balkans". This is exactly the kind of black and white photography that drew me into photography in the first place.
There are blogs about family vacations, cooking, knitting, little dog puppies, cats, hidden sexual fantasies, about photography, art and so much more. Despite the fact that nobody could ever possibly read all the blogs out there due to the sheer tremendous number of thousands and thousands of blogs, most of the time it wouldn't be worth it anyway. Frankly but at the same time nicely put: Most blogs are not very interesting at all. At least not if you are not the author or a close friend of the author.
But of course there are many, many exceptions to this as well. There are a whole bunch of blogs that are worth reading, that you can learn from, that can inspire you and broaden your horizon.
In an effort to bring some more inspiration to all of us I have collected 83 links to blogs about photography, art, multimedia and journalism, that I hope might be a source of good information for you. You might know a lot of them, or even all, but maybe you can find a couple of blogs that you did not yet know.
At the same time I updated the Magnum Blog's link page to include these blogs for future reference. The collection of various articles concerning photography on that page will of course still be available and updated from time to time.
Comments on the selection are appreciated and if you know a blog, or find one in the future, that should be added please let me know. Blogs that we link to usually do not only contain photographs but also some sort of textual information and thoughts. We will check every suggestion and if the submitted link could be of interest and value to our readers we will add it.
Thomas Alva Edison, who held approximately 1.500 patents, is often refered to as the inventor of the light bulb. He is not, but he was able to bring an old idea to life. On this day in 1879 he managed to test a light bulb that lasted for 13,5 hours. 356 of his patents dealt with electric lighting and the generation and distribution of electricity. Thank you Thomas Edison.
When I started to work at Magnum in New York it took quite some time before I had my first "real" conversation with David Alan Harvey. Before that I only knew him from saying "Hello" when our paths crossed from time to time in the office. And frankly… I never really knew what to think about this man as a person. He often seemed to be one of the "untouchables" to me, a photographer who seemed to be very self-confident, a man who seemed to be very self-confident.
And because of my prejudices I made up my mind and looked at David as the "cool guy", as somebody who is a bit superficial.
But as I said already, these have been my prejudices and maybe my enviousness. One day David told me about the Hip-Hop story he has been working on for quite some time. He took me out for lunch and continued to tell me about the story. He was very open minded, generous with advice and simply a friendly guy that was good to hang out with.
And my new opinion about David Alan Harvey being a generous, inspiring, great and normal man to talk to continued to rise even more with time.
David has been a blogger since the beginning of 2007. Very, very quickly his blog - or better his four blogs (1, 2, 3, 4) - became some of the most popular photography blogs out there. Through his blogs he shares his thoughts, advice and his own insecurities with those of us who do not have the chance to hang out with him or attend one of the many workshops he teaches. To me, reading his blog on a regular basis, sitting on another continent, is almost like talking to him or like reading in a book about photography. But it's more than just reading on the web, his blog became a real communication platform, something I would like the Magnum Blog to become too.
In a post entitled "in flight magazines" from May 2007 David wrote in reference to the community building power of the net, "...those of you who are still reading now know exactly what i mean...look at us right here...pretty cool right??? how else could we be doing this?? nice for me because it helps me keep my thoughts "organized" and is becoming the same kind of "diary" of life i did as a 14 yr. old photographer....and hopefully, this is nice for you because i try to put myself "in here" only to the extent that it will be useful information for you...mostly to let you know that i have the same problems as you or have had the same problems as you or certainly will in the future have the same problems as you ....the only thing i really have to "offer" is my current experience in the publishing world... both magazines and books.... and my long term friendships with so so many people in this biz....and mostly with the shared experiences i live every time i teach a workshop....i believe my students will tell you...
if i can keep this audience, we can do some really amazing things....here i am dreaming again, but sometimes my dreams happen...actually, they usually happen!!! once i focus, i am on the case!!"
And he continues "...we use the net to "community build" and then take that to reality...to print..."
This was the first time David wrote about his idea to get his readers directly involved and to eventually lead this to "real life".
Your Assignment
Over the next months David concreted his idea and gave his readers an assignment to work on. An assignment where you are allowed to work on a project that you always wanted to work on. He challenged his readers to produce a body of work that will stand out, that he would want to randomly select and present it to his audience that consists of known and unknown photographers alike, of photo editors, industry professionals and so on.
I would suggest reading his posts "in flight magazines", "collaboration", "your work", "timing", "psyched", "your assignment", "flood gates" and last but not least "bold steps" to get a better understanding of what David Alan Harvey is asking and looking for.
Finally, on September 18th he made yet another big step. He writes: "i announce now, to the readers of this forum, the offering of a $5,000. (u.s. dollars) stipend/grant for one exceptional photographer to help support their personal work.....this will be based on the photographs being sent to me now....
the deadline for sending work will now be extended to november 15, 2007....this will be based entirely on work produced between july 15, 2007 and the closing date.....the stipend will be awarded by december 15, 2007...Merry Christmas!!"
The "David Alan Harvey Blog Grant" aside, reading his posts, taking part in the very active communication with him, working on "your assignment" and trying to give your best in this collaboration effort provides a great chance for you that you shouldn't miss.
David was selected by his Magnum colleagues to help and initiate a Magnum educational program that is in the working. Even if his blog activities are not directly related to the Magnum educational program, it shows that he was the right person to be selected for this. His effort in helping and supporting young photographers is a unselfish and noble thing. This one goes out to you David!
It's been six years since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Our thoughts go out to the victims of the attacks in New York as well as to the victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please watch the September 11 Magnum In Motion Essay with photographs from 18 Magnum photographers.
It's been a little over two months now that Magnum welcomed three new nominees into the circle of Magnum Photographers. Once a year, the photographers from Magnum travel to Paris, London or New York for their Annual General Meeting (AGM). The 2007 AGM took place at the end of June in New York City. One day of the AGM is reserved to look at submitted portfolios and to decide upon new nominees, associates and members.
I briefly e-mailed with them to find out about their motivation to join Magnum and how it felt to be notified of their acceptance. A more in depth look at our new nominees will follow in the future. Make sure to post your comments or questions, we will try to find responses and answers to them by our nominees.
"I love photography. it is not only a means to an end to me. I love the whole process: from the first idea, all the way to the final print. And sharing it.
I still see making a photograph as an extraordinary and magical act and those qualities make it very powerful.
I wanted to be part of a group of people that I believe still love photography, respect it, don't underestimate it, and think about why, and how they use it.
And who - needless to say - are also photographers I've long admired, many having inspired me since I was a child.
I got a glimpse of how Magnum works through meeting a few of it's members during the application process, and it seems each person receives from the agency as much as they give. Each one uses Magnum in a different way and all coincided it is a chaos, but a beautiful one.
I have to get to know the workings of it. It is all a bit abstract still. And since I'm used to working alone I have to learn how to be part of a group now.
But I do know I want to do something different from what I've been doing on my own in terms of producing. That is another reason i applied: To be surprised and challenged all over again."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"On the afternoon the voting took place I came home from a picnic in the park with Martin (my husband), my baby Catalina, and a group of friends. There was a message from Susan Meiselas welcoming me to Magnum. So I went right back out, soaking wet on the E train, and celebrated at the MoMA!"
"After having worked a number of years with personal documentary photography, I was looking for a group of photographers, whose aims and ideas I could identify with. Some of the Magnum members have been a great inspiration to me during the creation of my own personality as a photographer, and now that I feel I have developed my own language within photography, I decided to apply for Magnum.
A strong and passionate interest in people and the subjects and a will not to compromise are some of the qualities which has made Magnum an attractive place for me to become part of. It is a very exciting process for me, because I have always worked alone, and I am just getting to learn how photographers can be individuals and still work as a group to obtain common goals."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"I did not have some crazy reaction, because I was alone with the news, and it seemed a bit unreal. One of the members called me shortly after the decision was made. I was in NY myself to show my work to galleries and a few members before the voting. I received the phone call at a friend's house in Queens, when I was taking a nap on this couch filled with an enormous amount of cat hair. At first I wasn't sure if I was still a sleep or not....
Becoming a nominee at Magnum was a goal that I had aimed for, and now reaching it, at first I didn't know what to do with the news. Then I called my girlfriend in Tokyo, my twin brother in Bangkok and my mother in Copenhagen. The people who always supported me... And their reactions made me understand it was for real. Afterwards I went on a round trip to visit them and celebrate."
"Since I started working as a photographer, I have always been represented by galleries rather then by agencies. The freedom that this has allowed has, I think been very important to my work. I haven't had to do assignments in order to make a living or fund work. Instead, I have done this through print sales. This has great advantages in some terms as it allows me to spend almost all my time on long-term personal projects rather then 1-week assignments. I also very much like the exhibition as a form of getting work seen as I think it allows for a very particular and very special form of contemplation of images. In an exhibition, one looks at photographs in a very physical way due to the fact that one walks through an exhibition rather then paging through it. I have also organized exhibitions in interesting and varied locations such as Nelson Mandela's old cell in Pollsmoor Prison, the South African Constitutional Court, and the Italian Parliament. This is also very important to me in ensuring that the work can be seen by a wider audience then just those who attend the more elite commercial galleries and museums.
So, while I am very happy to continue working in this way, I also want my work to be seen as widely as possible in different contexts too. I chose to apply to Magnum because I was attracted to the idea of being a part of an organization with such a strong tradition of engaged photographic practice. It made sense to join an agency for editorial photography, and Magnum was the obvious choice, as it seemed to be the best one. I also share a deep affinity and respect for most of the Magnum photographers and feel attracted to the shared quality of social engagement that seems to define Magnum.
I was given the wrong date for the portfolio meeting in New York, so the physical portfolio that I had gone to some lengths to prepare never arrived on time. When I realized this, I thought, ah well, thats it - no chance now. But Magnum already had a disk of my work which I had sent a few months previously for the preliminary selection at the London office, and somehow I got chosen on the basis of that."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"I received emails from Martin Parr and Jim Goldberg, I smiled to myself, and was really quite surprised after the portfolio problem. I then carried on preparing for the assignment that I was about to start.
While I am obviously delighted and honored to be chosen for Magnum, I really don't see it as changing anything in the way I work, except hopefully to help me to produce better work and get that work seen. But I don't want to allow anything, especially not the new attention that my work is receiving with the nomination, to distract me from my focus on long-term, sustained, and engaged projects."
Vacation time is over and it seems like the last days of summer are coming. I am looking forward to a productive fall, summertime and the blog statistics showed that people have either been on vacation or prefered to spend their time out on the beach, in the mountains, hanging out in bars or at BBQs. Which I wish I could have done as well...
So here is a question to you - assuming your summer is over as well: What have you done last summer? Floating around on tubes?
Wayne Miller's "Chicago's South Side" reminds me of one of my favorite photography books: Bruce Davidsons "East 100th Street". Until now I haven't been aware of Miller's Chicago's South Side. Shame on me...
From 1946 to 1948, Wayne Miller documented the daily lives of African-Americans in the post-World War II era in Chicago. His photographs capture both a developing cultural renaissance and the grim economic realities that faced Chicago's largest black community.
In case you are in France, in Chalon-sur-Saône to be precise, you should not miss his "Chicago's South Side" exhibition which is up until September 30th.
Chien-Chi Chang's books "The Chain", "I Do I Do I Do" or "Double Happiness" are well known, his work on New York's Chinatown, that he worked on for many, many years and still works on, is extremely remarkable. When I think of Chien-Chi's photographs I almost exclusively think of his black and white work.
Occasionally however, Chien-Chi also shoots in color and I think his color photographs are less known. You should take a look at New York's Chinatown in color or at his story from 1999 on homeless people in Bucharest. The photograph above is from that story. Comments are as always appreciated.
"We, the undersigned, believe that the new rules currently under consideration for Film Permits (Chapter 9, Title 43 of the City Rules of New York) will have an irrevocable impact on independent filmmakers and photographers and their ability to engage in creative work in New York."
In my humble opinion one of the most impressive photography books: "Pleine mer" (the english version is called "Men at sea"). See more photographs here. What do you think?
See more photographs from Utopia, Texas taken by Alec Soth in this Magnum album. And you might also be interested in his more recent personal blog post entitled "Reflections in the helmet shield". Looking through a mirror or a window? Comments appreciated.
Villagers looking at slides of themselves, Yumthang, North Sikkim. Marilyn Silverstone/Magnum Photos
In an effort to bring more photography on the Magnum Blog I am starting a new series of posts today called "Photo of the week". I admit... Posting a photo of the week is not a new idea but it's a nice way to share some more photographs from Magnum's enormous archive with you. Not much text - if text at all - other than the caption, just some visual joy.
Given the fact that Magnum's online archive currently consists of about 400.000 photographs I don't really have to worry about running out of adequate images. Even if every single Magnum photographer would stop shooting right now we'd have enough photographs for the next 7.692 years. Under these circumstances chances are pretty low that we will live to see the end of the "Photo of the week" series...
Today's photo of the week is a pretty well known one by Marilyn Silverstone but let's see which jewels the archive brings to the day of light that are less known...
Due to the fact that our former blog editor relocated to Stockholm it's been quiet on the Magnum Blog for a while. Time for a new start and some changes.
First of all I am going to briefly introduce myself. I am Martin Fuchs, an Austrian photographer and former intern at Magnum. Following my internship I have been freelancing for Magnum In Motion, the multimedia department, and various other departments for about two years. For my internship in 2005 I created my first blog (which is not updated anymore) and the blogging fever assumed power over me. It didn't let me go ever since and because I wanted to create a blog less tied to a certain location I created "Journal Of A Photographer".
The time I worked for Magnum proved to be a very valuable one. Imagine all the people you get to know and all the stories you get to hear... And over the long run I was even able to incorporate my blogging experience into Magnum. A couple of months ago I created the Magnum Blog and now I am very excited about the fact that I was asked to take over the editorial responsibilities for it.
This does not mean that I will be the one writing each and every article for this blog. It just means that I will try to gather as much information, stories, anecdotes and funny snippets for it as I can. Trying to give you a better insight into Magnum and what's going on. I will be in close touch with the photographers and one of our goals is to get them directly involved, to create a better way of communication and conversation between them and you.
Some of them such as Alec Soth and David Alan Harvey (the first two to start with) will become regular contributors to the blog. Both Alec and David have very interesting and successful blogs already. In case you don't know them yet check out Alec's blog and one or all four blogs of David Alan Harvey (1, 2, 3, 4).
There are many ideas and improvement suggestions that we want to incorporate and that we are working on. I am currently collecting content, I might change certain areas of the blog such as the links section a bit. But after all - you, our readers and visitors are the reason for this blog to exist and therefore I want this blog to become a more vital and valuable place for you to be.
I would like to ask you for a favor: It would be really great to hear your suggestions and ideas. What would you like to see and read here, what did you like so far and what did you find kind of odd? Please post your thoughts or e-mail me with any concerns you have about the blog at martin@magnumphotos.com.
This is a challenge and it's a good one. I am looking forward to all your comments and suggestions.
Continue reading 'First Impressions: Portfolio Review London'
The June 15 deadline for the for the 
Because our 
In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Paolo Pellegrin in 
Usually the Magnum Blog shouldn't be about shameless self promotion, it should offer an added value to our readers. Today however, I chose to use our blog for self promotion. Not shameless because I'd like to offer an added value or two.
