----- Original Message -----
From: <blog@...>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 3:26 AM
Subject: Magnum Blog Update: Early Magnum


> Magnum Blog Update: Early Magnum
>
> 2007.07.17 13:26:55
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://blog.magnumphotos.com/2007/07/early_magnum.html
>
> As the festivities around Magnum's 60th birthday and the famously
> passionate AGM in New York City are over, Inge Bondi, who worked for
Magnum
> for 20 years, looks back at the early years of the agency.
>
> By Inge Bondi:
>
> When I was hired by Magnum Photos in New York at the beginning of 1950 as
a
> researcher/secretary, Magnum was just two and half years old, having been
> established in New York and Paris in May 1947.
>
> The name conjured up pictures of glamour, but in fact its creation had
been
> an act of desperation: working conditions had changed.
>
> Robert Capa, a Hungarian, had already been acclaimed as the most daring
and
> brilliant of war photographers for his coverage of the Spanish Civil War
in
> the thirties. He and George Rodger, an Englishman, had covered World War
II
> for LIFE and other magazines. George had chased the enemy across Africa
> from East to West and had walked ahead of it out of Burma into India.
>
> Henri Cartier-Bresson had been a French prisoner of war in German hands,
> had worked with the French Underground after escaping, and had been given
a
> post-war retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946.
> David Seymour, a Pole known as as Chim, had been a much-published
> photographer before the war, and a great friend of Capa?s and
> Cartier-Bresson?s in Paris. He had spent the war years in the U.S. Army
> interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs.
>
> William Vandivert, the American, had worked for LIFE before and during the
> war. He stayed only a year with Magnum.
>
> The original Magnum photographers were all in their mid thirties and
> experienced in working independently in the field. With peace the
> magazines, especially in the US, began expanding their activities, hiring
> younger photographers on staff . Quite naturally, editorial emphasis
> shifted to the interests of the troops coming home and the daily routine
of
> newly united families.
>
> Stories from far-off lands had to be beyond the scope of the magazine
staff
> photographers. The small international group that created Magnum felt that
> tectonic changes would soon be creating a changed world, and they wanted
to
> report on them.
>
> Continue reading "Early Magnum" on our website.
>
>
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