Muhammad Ali by Thomas Hoepker

While Gruyaert became fascinated by the power of colour when he first moved to Paris in the 1960s, and subsequently on his first trip to New York in 1968 where he saw the works of Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, his revelation that colour photography was his preferred medium came from his very first trip to Morocco in 1969. Reminiscent of artists Eugène Delacroix and Henri Matisse, this revelation had a long-lasting impact on Gruyaert’s oeuvre which he decided to entirely dedicate to colour photography.

The exhibition is running online and at the Magnum Gallery in Paris until 2 April 2021

For six years Matt Black has been photographing communities and lands in the U.S where at least 20% of the population live in poverty. Travelling 100,000 miles through the U.S, Black has set out to explore whether the American dream is still viable, debunking the myth of America as a land of opportunity. “From a ground level, America looks very different from the stories we like to tell ourselves,” he says.

Philippe Halsman was born in Riga and began to take photographs in Paris in the 1930s. He opened a portrait studio in Montparnasse in 1934, where he photographed André Gide, Marc Chagall, André Malraux, Le Corbusier and other writers and artists, using an innovative twin-lens reflex camera that he had designed himself. He arrived in the United States in 1940, just after the fall of France, having obtained an emergency visa through the intervention of Albert Einstein. In the course of his prolific career in America, Halsman produced reportage and covers for most major American magazines, including a record 101 covers for Life magazine. His assignments brought him face-to-face with many of the century's leading personalities.

Together with Agata, Bieke Depoorter explores the complexities of the photographic enterprise, grappling with the relationship between photographer and subject. By diving deep into a collaborative working dynamic with a Polish woman she met in a strip club in Paris, she creates 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 Depoorter experimenting with the fragility of photographic authorship. Most of all, it’s the product of a photographer and a subject consciously agreeing to, as both Agata and Depoorter have put it, “use each other.”

Disliking the ‘superficiality and sensationalism’ of the magazine business, Werner Bischof devoted much of his working life to looking for order and tranquility in traditional culture. Despite this he worked on commission in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Indochina. In 1953, he traveled throughout Mexico and Panama, and then on to a remote part of Peru, where he was engaged in making a film. Tragically, Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on 16 May 1954.

David Seymour’s unobtrusive manner, sense of humor and ability to listen, helped in the creation of portraits that went beyond the usual “glamour shots,” conveying an air of relaxed intimacy. Among his subjects were Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins, Ava Gardner, Kim Novak – and Sophia Loren

Bruce Gilden is one of the most iconic street photographers of our time. Known for his graphic and often confrontational close-ups made using flash, his images have a degree of intimacy and directness that have become a signature in his work. Though he cut his teeth on the sidewalks of New York City where he grew up, he has since made significant bodies of work in Haiti, Japan, Moscow, France, Ireland and India. “I’m known for taking pictures very close,” says Gilden of his practice. “And the older I get, the closer I get.”

"I guess I'm a fairly simple photographer. There is very little hocus-pocus about what I do"

"My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport"

From Al Pacino to Sophie Loren, Welsh photographer David Hurn captured some of the most iconic images of actors, musicians, artists and celebrities of the 1960s and 70s. His compassionate portraits are born out of a skill for building a genuine trust with his subjects that puts them at ease.

For the last fifteen years, Gregory Halpern has been photographing in Omaha, Nebraska, steadily compiling a lyrical, if equivocal, response to the American Heartland. Omaha Sketchbook is ultimately a meditation on America, on the men and boys who inhabit it, and on the mechanics of aggression, inadequacy, and power.

Thomas Hoepker began his photographic career in the 1960s and made his reputation through impactful reportage and stylish color features, working on stories as varied as the culture of the Mayan people, the rise of Muhammad Ali and the politics and everyday life in East Berlin, before the wall fell. He has also spent much time in America, traversing its vast landscape and documenting its perennially alluring vistas.

Constantine Manos completed many assignments documenting American culture. In his series, American Color, he created unique and complex images that freeze surprisingly disparate elements together in a single fascinating frame. Photographing in crowded public places and many unique locales in the United States, such as Venice Beach and Atlantic City, and during special events like Bike Week in Daytona Beach and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Manos presents a kaleidoscopic view of the United States.

"The pictures I took spontaneously - with a bliss-like sensation, as if they had long inhabited my unconscious - were often more powerful than those I had painstakingly composed. I grasped their magic as in passing"

Zied Ben Romdhane started his career as a commercial photographer. In 2011 he switched to documentary photography and photojournalism. Romdhane published his first book West of Life in 2018 & joined Magnum as a nominee in 2019.

Rafal Milach grew up in Poland during the collapse of the Soviet Union and as a result his work often uses the transformation of the former Eastern Bloc as a lens through which to understand wider issues. His project Black Sea of Concrete, which takes as its subject the grey coastlines of Ukraine, documents a landscape that is struggling with the physical reminders of a difficult past.

"These photos are very different from my usual work. After decades of a certain type of photography, very kinetic and very dynamic, I have found myself looking for moments of silence. I’d never really photographed my family or the girls very seriously before. Yes, I’ve photographed them with an iPhone, as any other parent would. But I had a sense that I wanted to document this moment. This is the longest I’ve ever stayed with my family because I’m always traveling, always leaving, so to have this time together is very special. At the same time, I do not think of the pictures as a diary of a quarantine. Obviously there is that element, but I wanted to touch something that was more timeless and universal. Something about the girls, about the passage of time, about changes. Something that was in the moment but that also transcended it." Paolo Pellegrin

Guy Le Querrec has been documenting the jazz scene for decades. Says Le Querrec: “Jazz – my ears, my heart, my emotions need it. Its cadences, its rhythms… And then there’s that crucial word: to practice a photography of improvisation.”

A new collection of timeless photographs is available now in 8x10’’ format for the first time. These images are available as a limited edition of 100 prints priced at $399, and once sold will never again be available at this size.