Magnum Photos: Early Color

After the Second World War, the illustrated press — led by magazines such as Life, Paris Match, and Holiday — fundamentally reshaped the world’s visual perception. During this period, color photography became associated with modernity and immersive visual impact. Founded in 1947, Magnum Photos responded to this shift by granting its photographers unprecedented creative freedom and the opportunity to experiment with emerging color formats. The use of materials that were more expensive and technically demanding than black-and-white film encouraged a slower, more deliberate working process, bringing a visual approach attentive to atmosphere and detail into the world of photographic essays.

The exhibition offers a glimpse into the exciting early stages of this visual transition through the lens of Magnum’s first generation of photographers. The founding members David Seymour and George Rodger, who, alongside Robert Capa, also recognized and helped shape the growing demand for color stories in the press, are represented by significant works. Alongside them, the exhibition presents images by legendary photographers such as Werner Bischof, whose work balances formal composition with the descriptive richness of color, and Philippe Halsman, whose suggestive portraits dominated magazine covers, where visual impact was essential. Works by Inge Morath and Eve Arnold, who organically integrated color into their documentary practices, as well as photographs by Burt Glinn, who worked extensively in the United States and abroad, demonstrate how color became one of the most important expressive tools of press photography.