Magnum Degrees

The book, which overflows with photographs and includes only the briefest amount of text, is arranged thematically to effectively highlight the wide scope of images even within a narrow field. In "Middle East," Larry Towell captures boys playing in Gaza, while Micha Bar-Am trains his camera on a Jewish man, wrapped in a prayer shawl, fleeing a smoke bomb in Jerusalem. In "India," in the town of Benares, Ferdinando Scianna snaps photos of an excruciatingly thin man carrying his dead daughter and two nicely dressed young girls frolicking in the water. In "Religion," photographer Abbas trains his lens both on a man reenacting the Crucifixion in the Philippines and a woman being physically moved by the Holy Spirit in a rural Georgia church. As some of the themes--"Refugees," "Child Victims," "In the Camps," "War in Africa"--suggest, many of the images here are powerfully disturbing. Others, particularly those collected under the headings "Trees," "Fishing," and "Architecture," are lyrically beautiful. Still others, like Martin Parr's photographs of tourists on vacation the world over, are witty and comic. Taken together, the thousand or so photos here capture the often surprising, always complex nature of humanity and do justice to the agency founders' original intention to "document the world as it really is." --Jordana Moskowitz

Product Description
Here the photographers of Magnum, 50 years after the legendary group began its documentary mission, address the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; a period which has seen the triumph of US capitalism at one extreme and the resurgence of ancient blood feuds at the other. The book is built around photo-essays selected and introduced by the photographers, many shot especially for the book. From Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum's newest recruits, each photographer navigates the issues of history in their own way - some tackling the dramatic changes in the world head-on in the traditional manner of the "concerned photographer", others choosing subjects and aesthetic viewpoints which are entirely personal. The result is an album of contemporary photography about the world today. "Magnum" is introduced by historian, broadcaster and cultural commentator Michael Ignatieff, linking the substance and pace of change in the post-Cold-war world with the historic role of the Magnum witness and image-maker. This is a book about history and humanity, journalism and art, and revealing the photographers of Magnum entering a new era.

It is a beautiful edition, worth having and will make an excellent, classy present not only for a photography enthusiast, but for everybody.