Over more than seven decades, Magnum photographers have reported on and witnessed events around the world which changed societies, nations, and peoples in unpredictable ways. Here we look at six timeless Magnum photographs and the stories behind them.
The stories behind the making of images can present unexpected elements. Famed subjects can surprise those assigned to photograph them. Dennis Stock recalled that Audrey Hepburn was “indifferent to her (or anyone else’s) celebrity”. Eve Arnold’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe depicts a side of the superstar alien to most: pensive, withdrawn, and down to earth.
Celebrating the unpredictability of life, the curation of the Magnum’s Square Print Sale explores the happy accidents and unusual turns of events that lead to memorable images.
New York state senator Robert Francis Kennedy campaigning. Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. 1968.
by Burt Glinn
Copyright Elena Glinn
“In 1968, Burt spent many weeks photographing Bobby Kennedy as he travelled around the country during the Presidential campaign, as well as at Hickory Hill, his home in Arlington, Virginia, where Kennedy and Ethel raised their large family of eleven children.
The day he took this photo in Indianapolis, the press photographers were all crowded into the backs of trucks behind and ahead of RFK’s convertible. Bobby yelled to Burt, who was about to board one of the trucks: ‘Hey Burt, come with us, plenty of room in the back!’
They had been at Harvard together back in the late 1940s. As soon as Burt, his many cameras, and his usual well-worn and greased trench coat got into the car, the photographers ahead of them started squealing, ‘Hey Glinn, get down, you’re ruining the picture!’ He did as he was told and (from his new position lying down in the back of the campaign convertible) he looked up — and there they were! Ethel and Bobby in the rear view mirror.
Tragically, a week later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Chicago by Palestinian militant Sirhan Sirhan. 1968 was to be an extremely violent year in our country’s politics.”
Audrey Hepburn. Long Island, New York, USA. 1954.
by Dennis Stock
Copyright Susan Richards, Dennis Stock Estate
“This image was made during the filming of ‘Sabrina’, which starred Hepburn, alongside Humphrey Bogart. The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards the following year, including one for Hepburm for Best Actress. In spite of her celebrity, Hepburn was unexpectedly down to earth and accessible. Dennis appreciated that quality in her as it was an unusual trait for a star of her caliber. He was a little in love with her (who wasn’t) and said she treated everyone kindly, indifferent to her (or anyone else’s) celebrity. More than anything she valued family, and her work with UNICEF.”
Gao, Mali. 1988.
by Harry Gruyaert
Copyright Harry Gruyaert
“In 1998, I was working on an assignment in Mali. I was staying in a little hotel in Gao, a small town on the River Niger. It was terribly hot in the hotel. Looking for some air, I went to the room on the top floor. There was an opening in the wall which perfectly framed the landscape outside, while the light coming from another opening was cutting a sharp geometric pattern in the surrounding shadow. The air was perfectly still. And just as I started shooting, a sudden draft blew the curtain hanging on the right to a perfect angle. For me, photography is all about trying to be lucky.”
Pant-y-Wean. Wales, UK. 1961
by Phillip Jones Griffiths
Copyright Estate of Phillip Jones Griffiths
“This young boy, who Philip found taking a line-out (throw-in) atop this dilapidated piano, epitomises the ambivalent Welsh love for both rugby and music. Pant-y-Wean, was once, in the 1930s, voted the most beautiful village in South Wales, but it has long since been obliterated by opencast mining. When Philip asked this boy what he was doing with this broken instrument, he replied, ‘My mother gave it to me to mend.’”
Jaco. Beaufort West Prison, South Africa. From the series Beaufort West. 2006
by Mikhael Subotzky
Copyright Mikhael Subotzky
“For many years I had driven around the traffic circle at the centre of Beaufort West without realising it contained a prison. In 2004 and 2005, I worked on a project exploring the relationship between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the South African carceral system. In 2006, while pausing in Beaufort West on the long drive between Cape Town and Johannesburg, I realized what was there and chose this ‘prison in an island’ as a starting point for a wide-ranging portrait of this small town’s social dynamics.
On entering the prison for the first time, Jaco was one of the first inmates I met. I saw him asleep in front of the mural he helped create. Others have described the painting in this photograph as a ‘thought bubble’ to his dreams. I am still struck by the way it shifts space, rendering the town’s surrounding landscape on the very walls that separated him from that vista. What I found surprising, although perhaps not unexpected, in retrospect, was the absence of people in this landscape – an idealisation of Beaufort West that omitted the very social dynamics that drew me there. By photographing those surroundings over the span of three years, I hoped to ‘re-people’ that landscape, to tell the stories of those whose lives took them into and around that traffic circle.”
Reflections of San Marco. Venice, Italy. 1953.
by Herbert List
Herbert List, translated from Du magazine, 1973
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