ear leading up to the 2014 Sochi Olympics zig-zagging up and down the various North Caucasus republics, trying to imagine what life was like beyond the controlled confines of the event. At a sparsely attended horse-race in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria region and cultural center of the Circassian ethnic group, I found my Mr. Magritte. Having been brutally decimated in the 19th century through genocide and deportations, Circassians are now affirming their place in the complex politics of Russia which are playing out in the troubled North Caucasus.” – Thomas Dworzak © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos

es to the idea of striving to reach perfection, but also transcends it. In this ambiguous moment of suspended flight the viewer is invited to indulge their imagination.” – Paolo Pellegrin

was enough for my family; I was to be a photographer of peace.” - Cornell Capa © Cornell Capa © International Center of Photography | Magnum Photos

ey can help us to understand our world and our place in it.” – Matt Black © Matt Black | Magnum Photos

ry I was born in. The wind could be heard whispering, more and more, spreading emotions and lights all around. Briefly they would create a warm and tender reality — it’s possible to cling to this when exploring foreign lands.” – Enri Canaj © Enri Canaj | Magnum Photos

you’ in the local language. Piteraqs are most common in the autumn and winter. Wind speeds typically reach 180–288 km/h (111–178 mph).” – Wikipedia – Jacob Aue Sobol © Jacob Aue Sobol | Magnum Photos

. But driving through this very posh neighborhood in Washington DC, and seeing this car on a slope with the flowers in the foreground, made me think of images by Elliott Erwitt: something in the position of the car and the whole situation that reminded me of his pictures. So I shot it, as a tribute to Elliott Erwitt and his sense of humour.” – Harry Gruyaert © Harry Gruyaert | Magnum Photos

darkness in American history. Looking back at it now, it's hard to imagine the feeling of hopefulness I felt back then.” – Alec Soth © Alec Soth | Magnum Photos

d War was raging. What a difference between that situation and the picture. Some lines from his diary around that time: Just the same oppressive state with all its attendant horrors and the destruction of everything beautiful — war. (October 1940) How are we young people meant to endure all this misfortune! (May 1941)” – Estate of Werner Bischof © Werner Bischof | Magnum Photos

an exciting place to be for young creative types. It became a hub for musicians, poets and beatniks. Philip was there to document this extraordinary period of social and cultural history and capture the early days of the now iconic Fab Four." – Estate of Philip Jones Griffiths © Philip Jones Griffiths | Magnum Photos

s myself, but a fiction filmmaker or a painter. I draw my inspiration from reality. Reality is my raw material (my matière première). Yet I like it when my pictures transcend that, and suggest more than they demonstrate. The viewer can then imagine whatever they like and develop their own interpretations. I am convinced that the strength of photography lies in reality and the way we look at it and grasp some magic within those moments. Fiction exists in reality, and images of this are often stronger than any that are staged.” – Patrick Zachmann © Patrick Zachmann | Magnum Photos

77, the people were euphoric and the streets were full of cut-out ‘Peace Doves’, whose shadows created a strange new breed of walking birds.” – Micha Bar-Am © Micha Bar Am | Magnum Photos

naked man, yes. But what is really happening in this scene? To each, his or her own fiction.” – Richard Kalvar © Richard Kalvar | Magnum Photos

ly of eight children, I enjoyed going home almost more than anything else. I’d load some of my five younger sisters into a car and drive around, looking for abandoned farmhouses. In these unofficial museums with letters, clothing, and photographs scattered over the floor, we’d imagine ourselves living in a different time and place.” – Larry Towell © Larry Towell | Magnum Photos

ological origins of which date back to the end of the last planetary glaciation (approximately 12,000 years ago). For decades, gigantic, theatrical-looking iron and concrete equipment has inexorably eaten away the banks, the marshes, the expanses of sand, silt, grasses, waterways and reeds, devouring them slowly. I sometimes stumbled upon the disjointed traces of a construction site. It’s not that nature was taking back the upper hand. No... This was just the transformation or disappearance of businesses; the evolution of an entirely different fight, a completely different drama, of which there will likely soon be nothing left.” – Jean Gaumy © Jean Gaumy | Magnum Photos

.” – Raymond Depardon © Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

s of a stool. This is a more compact way to transfer present realities into the future. However, we, the image makers, are just witnesses. And imagination is an obstacle. Wandering in the labyrinths of life's prose, we can afford the only luxury — poetry. Creating rhymes, drawing with light, successfully catching the moment and preparing food for our descendants — for their imagination.” – Gueorgui Pinkhassov © Gueorgui Pinkhassov | Magnum Photos

agic. It was 1949, and Cocteau was in NYC to promote his new film, ‘The Eagle Has Two Heads.’ Life magazine asked him to visit Halsman’s studio. The two artists had briefly crossed paths in Paris in the 1930s, resulting in a few backstage theatre shots. But now Halsman was at the height of his career, and was looking forward to capturing the creative genius of Cocteau. Halsman assembled various elements for the shoot: 12 doves, a snake, an anatomical torso, and two dancers; Ricki Soma and Leo Coleman. At first Cocteau was a reserved, yet willing actor. He followed Halsman’s directions, posed, and then asked what to do next. Halsman recalled the shoot’s early stages: ‘To my immense disappointment I saw that instead of becoming the instrument of his imagination he was ready to be the instrument of mine.’ It was only in the early hours of the following day that Cocteau began to warm up and become more playful, and the imaginations of the pair merged as one. Cocteau is shown as an artist with his subject in a frame, yet simultaneously he is the subject of the frame of Halsman’s lens. Art had come to life.” – Oliver Halsman Rosenberg, Estate of Philippe Halsman © Philippe Halsman | Magnum Photos

of young white and black people, arms crossed, holding hands, singing, ‘We shall overcome, we shall overcome someday…’ These people are in my mind forever, singing these words.” – Brigitte Freed, then 29, now 86 years old. © Leonard Freed | Magnum Photos

Normandy beaches in order to revisit the location where the Allied D-Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944. Chim’s particular interest in how the young dealt with and reacted to years of conflict led him to these kids playing happily on the beach near the ominous steel shell of an abandoned fortification. The four children seem deeply engrossed in their imaginative plan to make a sand castle or some other creation, somehow ignoring what is hanging over their heads. The terror of D-Day lingers over this image of children and calm weather, with clouds softening the sunshine. Chim recorded these contrasting emotions using color film, which he helped make popular for photojournalism in mass media publications. This photo drew widespread attention when it featured on the cover of This Week magazine, a nationally syndicated supplement which was included in the Sunday edition of the New York Herald Tribune and other publications on August 18, 1947. Further to the cover image, the magazine included 22 of Chim’s color and black and white images, credited to ‘War Veteran David Seymour’.” – Ben Shneiderman, nephew of David “Chim” Seymour © David Seymour | Magnum Photos

se seemingly endless times of difficulty, I find comfort in remembering certain moments that I have been fortunate to witness, in which the awesome power of love triumphs over adversity.” – Moises Saman © Moises Saman | Magnum Photos

n though surrealism as a concept of life influenced Inge the most, she fell in love with Franc Marc’s expressionist painting, ‘Blue Horse’. One could interpret this image as her version of the ‘Blue Horse’: a mix of imagination and reality that teeters between fact and fiction." – Sana Manzoor, Inge Morath Estate © Inge Morath | Magnum Photos

ardy men jumped in and were baptized by him. I was working photographing the frozen conflict in Transnistria, a region that broke away from Moldova in the 1990s, and set itself up as an independent republic located between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border. Today this remains a disputed zone that embodies competing narratives: for some Transnistria is a full-fledged independent country, with its own president, currency, constitution and armed forces. For others, it doesn’t even officially exist on the map. The image became part of my first book Satellites, which is a journey through such unrecognized territories along the southern border of the former USSR.” – Jonas Bendiksen © Jonas Bendiksen | Magnum Photos

I couldn’t seem to paint. Faced with the blank page, I couldn’t seem to write. I slowly realized that I needed the physical world—with its endless bounty of paradoxes and contradictions—in order to create. I understood that for me, at least, the world was more remarkable than that which I could imagine.” – Alex Webb © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos

irits of one's ancestors on the day of Qingming (Pure Brightness), the fifteenth day after the spring equinox. Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou becomes lively from late March until the Qingming Festival (which usually falls around April 4) as elderly women from rural villages visit the temple and take the opportunity to sightsee in Hangzhou. They light red candles, burn a sheet of paper, put their hands together, and recite several prayers. Then they go home, taking with them the ashes of the burnt paper. Such pious women from the countryside evidently must have seemed strange to some: I saw some young people laughing out loud at this scene.” – Hiroji Kubota © Hiroji Kubota | Magnum Photos

ful color-play between the two women – one wore a yellow dress with green shoes, the other was in red. As I was getting ready to click the shutter, the wind caught the dress of the women in yellow. It wasn't blowing it up around her knees like a Marilyn Monroe picture, it was just fluffing it. It was a delicate moment.” – Bruce Davidson © Bruce Davidson | Magnum Photos

n isolated villages which would become my second book, A Greek Portfolio. The images I made in Greece all had a real emphasis on the people. A rule of thumb of mine during that time was to work only in villages which had no electricity. My parents were Greek immigrants to the United States, and being fluent in the language was a great help. I found these villages and their inhabitants to be warm and welcoming.” – Constantine Manos © Constantine Manos | Magnum Photos

ition, a zombie. With that idea in mind, I went to meet him for our first photo shoot, in 1981. They gave me very little time so I came prepared. Thinking of his famous silkscreen prints which were based on the primary colors, red, green, and blue, I took some colored transparent filters with me to his famous Factory on New York’s Union Square. Andy greeted me with a cold handshake and whispered: “What do you want me to do?” I explained what I had in mind, and without any hesitation he stood silently in front of me, staring through the colored filters into the camera. Andy— bathed in green, red, and blue—looked like his very own ghost, but was utterly professional. To give the picture an even more ghostly appearance I thought a double exposure would be good to try.” – Thomas Hoepker © Thomas Hoepker | Magnum Photos

ent. It is the courage and the burden of revolutionaries to imagine a different fate for themselves and their nation. That sentiment has always inspired and frightened me. I’d seen revolutions go horribly awry before, and feared a violent and protracted unraveling in a country which I felt a close relationship with after many years of working there. The future of Lebanon and the revolution remains unresolved and fraught with dangers, but at that time it was impossible to be unmoved by such a broad cross section of society demonstrating for a peaceful transition of power. This picture was taken near a road-block at the entrance of the ring-road around Beirut.” – Peter van Agtmael © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos

iving deep into a collaborative working dynamic, we create a small alternate universe that raises more questions than it offers answers: Who made these images? Who is the subject? Who is Agata? This project is both the story of a young woman searching for identity, by playing with it as if it were a toy, and the story of myself experimenting with the fragility of photographic authorship. In this photograph you see Agata as Germaine. Germaine is the owner of the house in Paris Agata squatted and lived in for a while. We find Germaine's diaries, the seven urns of her dead cats, photos, videos, clothes and long lists of films she still wanted to watch. We drink wine out of her glasses, Agata sleeps in her bed, and with the help of a medium, we call Germaine’s spirit. Agata makes Germaine’s life hers. While we imagine being her, we dress up as the old lady and hope to go to Corsica soon, to waterski, something we are sure Germaine would have loved to do.” – Bieke Depoorter © Bieke Depoorter | Magnum Photos

re stuck at the border, living in terrible conditions. Most of these people spent weeks or months on the road before arriving at this camp. They had a long journey; they fled their homes because of conflicts, violence or economic crisis. I had been documenting the terrible situation faced by the refugees in the Idomeni camp for a few days when I came across this scene. It was a moment of grace during which these young people imagined they were somewhere else, far from the harsh reality in which they were stuck. Imagination remains for many the only means of escape: it can take you anywhere. I simply took a picture and watched them having fun and laughing for a few minutes... Then they went back to reality." – Emin Özmen © Emin Özmen

ory that lies beyond, and allows an oblique glance back." – Nikos Economopoulos © Nikos Economopoulos | Magnum Photos

began to collaborate on a series of portraits mirroring a character in her film ‘Asparagus’, where a woman wearing a mask steps out of herself into an alternate, eternal world. This image still carries our deep spirit of connection and shared imagination. It now lives on with me, in memory of Suzan who sadly left us suddenly last year.” – Susan Meiselas © Susan Meiselas | Magnum Photos

en I was invited to make work about Dubai, a place that I found disorienting and lonely. I wondered if I could find a way to see the city through the eyes of someone I had read about. There was a man who had disappeared in a shipwreck 50 years previously and was still believed to be alive by their family. Hoping that this point of view might help me to express the feeling of isolation I was experiencing, I decided to ‘borrow’ his eyes. Through this story, I managed to find a way into the city — and its history — and see it differently to how I might have otherwise. This double-exposure came about by mistake but I always felt that it represented something important about the project and the feeling I had been searching for. In it I see the transient nature of life in Dubai, of things both coming towards you and going away at the same time. This project became my second book, Stranger.” – Olivia Arthur © Olivia Arthur | Magnum Photos

by glaciers were thinning and collapsing from underneath, as well as retreating. It was shot on a 5x4 Ebony large-format camera under the Gurgler Glacier, in the Austrian Alps.” – Stuart Franklin © Stuart Franklin | Magnum Photos

l rights activist — a hugely inspirational figure. This image captures something of Baker’s raw energy and dynamism. It also exemplifies Eve Arnold’s ability to create relatable images of remarkable people by showing their humanity — a talent she embodied in equal measure with her knack of portraying ‘ordinary’ people with great dignity and poise. Compelled by the fight for civil rights throughout her career, this image represents a meeting point between Eve’s journalistic fascination with a changing world — and those who change it — and her talent for showing that even our heroes are flesh and blood." – Michael Arnold, Estate of Eve Arnold © Eve Arnold | Magnum Photos

ed mysteries—or joys—of photography is how a group of items or facts in a photograph can seemingly produce a different reaction than the obvious when one simply analyses the component parts. There is always ambiguity related to our personal imagination. What is the lovely lady with the camera thinking? What is the hero of the moment, Paul, suggesting? What does pointing suggest?” – David Hurn © David Hurn | Magnum Photos

when I took this photo, and was asking my driver to reverse, to veer right and left. So it became quite a game and left us in hysterics.” – Martin Parr © Martin Parr | Magnum Photos