MAGNUM Photos 75
Free to visit:
June 25, 2022 – September 04, 2022
Tuesday–Friday: 2pm–7pm
Saturday–Sunday: 11am–7pm
Closed on Monday and on public holidays.
Capa Központ – Project Room
Curator: Gabriella Csizek
Throughout 2022, Magnum Photos celebrates its 75th anniversary. From its beginnings in 1947, founded in the aftermath of World War II and the beginnings of a new epoch, Magnum has embraced a diverse array of individual points of view to express a unique vision of the world. And whatever the driving force of the photographer’s motivations, their stories have always been told – and their visions always conveyed – through the lens of subjective expression, from the inside looking out. Magnum Photos 75 Years examines how the photographers, the agency, the medium of documentary photography, have evolved over three-quarters of a century. It reverses the lens to focus on the photographers themselves, providing fascinating historical insight into the stories and processes behind the making of many of the finest photographs of the 20th and 21st centuries.
This exhibition consists of 75 files printed in a large poster format. Each poster relates to one particular year, from 1947 to 2022, and consists of a text and a QR code that, if scanned with a smart phone, will reveal the image connected to the text.
MAGNUM PHOTOS
Since its foundation in 1947, Magnum Photos holds independence one of its most fundamental values. It is community of photographers with different visions, different technical approaches, and different artistic interests. This co-operative has been functioning and held together for 75 years by a belief in the significance of creating photographic imagery, by a respect for the individual way of seeing things, by following an internal compass in choosing their subjects and in creating photographic work. Its cohesion is also defined by a continuous dialogue about the social role, as well as the distinctive features of photography. Magnum’s history is unique and exemplary because it proves that a community, while constantly renewing itself, may continue to exist by the principles of its founders, or, to quote Henri Cartier-Bresson, to follow the “ethical adventurers”.
Magnum Photos was founded after the proposal of Robert Capa in 1947 – two years after the end of World War II – by Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour. According to some recollections, the name – meaning large in Latin, as well a large bottle of champagne or a handgun – was also suggested by Robert Capa and accepted unanimously. All of them were traumatized by the destructions of the war, at the same time they also shared the feeling of liberation afterwards and, with a faith in the future, they founded the first photography agency for photographers.
The tragic events of the first decade after the foundation – Werner Bischof lost his life in a car accident in the Andes in 1954, Robert Capa died in 1954 when he stepped on a landmine in Indochina, and David “Chim” Seymour became the victim of Egyptian gunfire while he was driving a car in 1956, four days after the ceasefire during the Suez Crisis had been signed – made the members reconsider the question of how to go on. According to some they continued because they were essentially motivated by not wanting the deaths of their associates to be in vain. This alone, however, would not have been sufficient for Magnum Photos to become an institution fundamentally defining our vision of the world and to have the greatest photographers of the international scene amongst its members.
Defining principles of the foundation have withstood the test of time and this nearly seven and a half decades have become a worthy continuation of the great initial period.
Gabriella Csizek
curator
