Magnum Photos Now: Photobooks: History, Future, Form – One-Day Symposium

From Henri Cartier-Bresson’s creative partnership with the publisher Robert Delpire, to Alec Soth’s experimental publishing house Little Brown Mushroom, the photobook as a means of expressing a body of work has been a critical preoccupation of Magnum’s membership since the agency’s inception in 1947.

As part of Magnum’s 70th anniversary celebrations in New York in June, you can explore photobooks with Martin Parr, Fred Ritchin, Susan Meiselas, along with other Magnum photographers, critics and publishers in this special one-day symposium in partnership with the ICP.

The next in the Magnum Photos Now talks programme with the ICP offers four panels covering the history and future of photobooks, the photobook in relation to social and political conflict as well as the trend of personal narratives invigorating the form.

Schedule

The Magnum Founders’ First Books (10:30-11:45am)

Moderated by Kristen Lubben, with Inge Bondi, Jinx Rodger, and Cynthia Young

Photobooks on Social and Political Conflict (12-1:15pm)

Moderated by Fred Ritchin, with Bruce Davidson, Susan Meiselas, and Larry Towell

Personal Narratives (2:30-3:45pm)

Moderated by Carole Naggar, with Michael Christopher Brown, Bieke Depoorter, and Sohrab Hura

The Future of Photobooks (4-5:15pm)

Moderated by Martin Parr, with Olivia Arthur, Lesley Martin, and Alec Soth

Book Signing (5:15-6pm)

Aperture, Phaidon and Thames and Hudson will be selling books and a group of Magnum photographers will be available for signing, just after the symposium.

Tickets are available here.

Olivia Arthur

Olivia Arthur’s work focuses on women and the East-West cultural divide, with projects like “The Middle Distance” and her first book, Jeddah Diary (2012), opening up the world of young women in Saudi Arabia.

Inge Bondi

Inge Bondi joined Magnum New York in 1950 where she worked closely with the original founders and learnt photo editing from Ernst Haas and Werner Bischof. She produced the book Chim: The Photographs of David Seymour (1996).

Michael Christopher Brown

Michael Christopher Brown’s first monograph, Libyan Sugar (2016), won the First Photo Book category of the Paris Phot /Aperture First Book Award and the ICP Infinity Award for Artist’s Book. A film and a mixed media installation will complete the project.

Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson began working as a freelance photographer for Life magazine in 1957. His work has been extensively published in classic monographs, among them: Subway (1968), East 100th Street (1970), Brooklyn Gang (1998), Central Park (2005), Circus (2007), England/Scotland (2014), and In Color (2015).

Bieke Depoorter

Bieke Depoorter’s first book I am about to call it a day (2014) was the result of capturing unguarded moments in the lives of the strangers she encountered on her 2010 journey across America. She is currently working on a new book Who knows/Mumkin that will be published in October 2017.

Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura is from a small town called Chinsurah in West Bengal, India. His first book, Life is Elsewhere (2015) is a personal journal of his life and loved ones.

Kristen Lubben

Kristen Lubben is the Executive Director of the Magnum Foundation, a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography. She is also the author and editor of numerous publications, including Magnum Contact Sheets (2011).

Lesley A. Martin

Lesley A. Martin is creative director and publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. In 2015, she was named a visiting critic to the Yale MFA Photography program.

Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas’ first major photographic essay, focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs, resulted in the book Carnival Strippers (1976). She is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua, published in Nicaragua (1981).

Carole Naggar

Carole Naggar has worked as a poet, artist, curator, educator, and photography historian since 1971. Among her recent publications are Magnum Photobooks: Catalogue raisonné and her translation of Cartier-Bresson’s Interviews & Conversations will soon be released by Aperture.

Martin Parr

Martin Parr has published over 80 books of his own work and edited another 30. Bad Weather (1982), The Last Resort (1986), and Life’s a Beach (2013) are among his most notable books.

Fred Ritchin

Fred Ritchin is Dean of the School at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin has written numerous essays and books, including In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (1990), After Photography (2008) and Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen (2013).

Jinx Rodger

Lois ‘Jinx’ Rodger was born in 1925 and worked as a picture editor at the Ladies Home Journal with John Morris. This is where she met her future husband George Rodger, one of the founding members of Magnum.

Alec Soth

Since his first critically acclaimed monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Alec Soth has published NIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007), The Last Days of W (2008), Broken Manual (2010), and Songbook (2015). Soth has his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom.

Larry Towell

Larry Towell began photographing in the 1970s. Among his books are: El Salvador (1997), Then Palestinian (1998), The Mennonites (2000), In the Wake of Katrina (2006), The World From My Front Porch (2008), and Afghanistan (2014).

Cynthia Young

Cynthia Young is the Curator of the Robert Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography.  She curated the first major show to look at Capa’s color work, Capa in Color, in 2014, now traveling in Europe and South America.

Join us in celebrating Magnum’s 70th anniversary throughout 2017. Bookmark our anniversary hub to find seminal stories, new work, and discover what Magnum events are happening near you.