The Magnum Digest: November 8, 2019
Magnum members join Photography Hall of Fame, Sohrab Hura wins Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook Award, Alec Soth photographs Detroit's booming art scene, and more from Magnum photographers over recent weeks
Magnum members join International Photography Hall of Fame
There Magnum photographers, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt and Steve McCurry, have been inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. The IPHF annually awards and inducts, “notable photographers or photography industry visionaries for their artistry, innovation, and significant contributions to the art and science of photography.” An exhibition of new inductees’ work is now open at the IPHF Museum, St. Louis, MO.
More information about the Hall of Fame, and this year’s inductees can be found here.
Sohrab Hura wins Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Award
The Coast, Sohrab Hura‘s latest book, has been announced as the winner of the 2019 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook of the Year award. The Coast explores a growing mood of personal and political violence in India through Hura’s images and his repeated, morphing short story.
Nina Strand, one member of the award’s jury, said that The Coast is a “photobook that works on the same level as a challenging work of fiction.”Another jury member, Emma Bowkett, described the publication as, “a lyrical, political narrative with a strong, determined voice.”
You can learn more about the book and the wider project through an interview with Hura on Magnum, here. You can read about this year’s Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Award winners on the Aperture site, here.
Emin Özmen’s new work on Buzzfeed News
Emin Özmen has, over recent weeks, been photographing ongoing incursions by Turkish forces into Kurdish-held regions of northern Syria. The escalating tensions in the region, which followed a largescale withdrawal of US forces by president Trump, have left civilians in towns like Akçakale once again mired in violence, and the tentative stability the region experienced after the defeat of Islamic State shattered.
You can see the feature on Buzzfeed News, here.
Omaha Sketchbook reviewed in The Washington Post
Gregory Halpern’s newest photobook, Omaha Sketchbook, has been reviewed in The Washington Post. The book, which is a recreation of the photographer’s working sketchbooks from his time photographing in Omaha, Nebraska, looks at traditional American masculinity in the Midwestern City. As the review notes: “Ultimately, Omaha Sketchbook isn’t merely an examination of male life in the American Midwest, but a meditation on “Americanness” overall.”
You can read an extensive interview with Halpern about the work, on Magnum, here. And you can read the Post’s article, here.
One of Mark Power’s subjects tracked down by The Wall Street Journal
Falk Fleischer was a 20-year-old trainee East German border guard at the Berlin Wall’s Checkpoint Charlie on Nov. 9, 1989 – the night that the city finally unified after decades of enforced division. Mark Power was photographing at the Checkpoint and Fleischer’s lost-looking face is one of many in his coverage of the events.
The Wall Street Journal tracked down Fleischer to discuss his efforts to rebuild his life in a new Germany after ‘89. You can read the feature here.
This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the city’s unification. You can see more of Power’s work on the wall, as well as that of other Magnum photographers, here.
Jean Gaumy featured in rundown of the best LFI covers of the last 70 years
“I love the raw emotions in the scene. You know that Jean is completely there: I can feel the waves crashing, I can taste the salt. He’s not just carrying out an assignment: he’s fully committed to the story, and is, in fact, one of the fishermen; only his tool isn’t a net but his camera.” So writes Dominic Nahr – in Leica Photographie International’s – of Jean Gaumy’s photograph of fishermen at work on a rolling deck at sea. The write up is part of LFI’s ongoing series on its best cover images.
You can read more about the image and see the other entries here.
David Seymour’s portrait of Tereska explored
Of the many photographs David ‘Chim’ Seymour made of children as part of his extensive documentation of ravaged, post-war Europe, his portrait of Tereska is perhaps the best-known. The young girl, captured as she draws her home, was photographed in a home for disturbed children in Warsaw, Poland. First published in LIFE the image was also included in Edward Steichen’s legendary “The Family of Man” exhibition at MoMA. Now, researchers have at last learned more about the girl in the photo.
You can read more on The Washington Post, here.
