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Back in Time with Magnum Photographers, 1988-1978

Posted by: Rachel Hulin Date: July 8, 2008 | No comment

Back, back we go. Here’s inspiration from some of the best in the business.

1988. Northern Ireland. West Belfast. Mourners at a Republican funeral flee for cover as they are attacked by Protestant fanatic Michael Stone.

“There is no objectivity and you’ve got to react as a human being to what’s in front of you. If you cease to do that, you cease to be any good.”

- Chris Steele-Perkins

1987 Italy. Sicily. The Italian model Marpessa photographed for Dolce & Gabbana.

“The fashion work Marpessa began with Dolce & Gabbana asking me, ‘What do you want to do?’ and with me saying, ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’ It started with a telephone call from Domenico Dolce. Now they are very famous but at the time they were virtually unknown and certainly I’d never heard of them.”

- Ferdinando Scianna

1986: Iran. Tehran. Veiled women training shooting in the outskirts of the city.

“When I am with a professional fisherman, or with people in Iran, or when I am in a hospital, things are very clear- especially in hospital, because there are matters of life and death at hand.”

- Jean Gaumy

1985: India. Bombay. Fishermens’ village.

“Anything that makes me take more pictures is always good. But I will never intervene in the composition of my pictures. Once you do that you’re dead. My imagination is not good enough to improve a picture with a computer. Reality still beats any attempt of staging or digital manipulation.”

- Carl De Keyzer

1984: PAKISTAN. Peshawar. Afghan Girl at Nasir Bagh refugee camp.

“I strive for individual pictures that will burn in people’s memories.”

- Steve McCurry

1983: LEBANON. Beirut. A rescue team lifts a soldier out of the debris of what used to be the U.S. Marine headquarters.

“To me documentary photography is about coming to terms with the world and the things that you see, by photographing them. It’s what you record during your walk on the planet Earth. If aliens were to visit, it would be a way of explaining to them what our reality is.”

- Eli Reed

1982: CHINA. Beijing. A group of Chinese watching “the Long Nose”, a term which refers to all westerners, including the photographer.

”All my projects involve traveling backwards and forwards between the outside world and my internal world – between external subjects and my past, my identity, my subconscious. I am questioning the identities of others to better understand myself. Photography is great for this because as a medium it’s about identity and memory.”

- Patrick Zachmann

1981: Manhattan. Near the Rockefeller Center.

“So the first thing about my photography was that it made me feel like I existed. People said, “Can you show me your photos?” and that gave me strength despite my shyness and inhibition.”

- Raymond Depardon

1980: Italy. Rome. Piazza della Rotonda.

“The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That’s what’s always excited me about photography.”

- Richard Kalvar

1979: Mexico. Border Crossing.

“My photographic process lies between extremes: one extreme is play, the other is discipline; one is confusion, another is structure. I move between these extremes and keep pushing – looking for more and more visual complexity while managing to hold the frame together.”

- Alex Webb