Children of Europe was co-produced by the MF Legacy program in relation to the current exhibition “We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933 1956 by Chim” at ICP and the publication “Chim: Children of Europe,” forthcoming from Umbrage Books. The video is edited and narrated by Carole Naggar.

David “Chim” Seymour was a co-founder of Magnum Photos. The MF legacy Program works closely with Magnum’s estates to activate the archives they hold through a variety of publication and exhibition programs.

Pia de Richemont
Head of Sales Magnum Photos Paris 1987-1991

 “I remember when Gueorgui Pinkhassov walked into the office one day. Nobody knew him. He came in. At the time he didn’t speak very good French and he said, “I have these photos. They are important. You must show them, you must have them, you must sell them!”  And people just thought he was some sort of - you know - he couldn’t speak the language and nobody knew him. He was being shuffled around the office and nobody was looking after him, so after a while I go over and say, “What’s happening?”  So he explains that he had just come from Armenia and a war was about to start and nobody knew this, but he had the photos to prove it, he had the tanks and everything. I sit down and have a look at the pictures. “OK, OK, just wait a minute here.”  So I went in to see the director and said, “I think we’ve got something here.”  And it was a scoop, and it was huge, and - well - the rest is history. Pinkhassov is still there doing, doing…  But that was amazing.” 

MagnumTime interview in Paris, France, 2011

Werner Bischof

Exhibition in Sardinia

 Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro presents a large exhibition of Werner Bischof. The show is curated by his son Marco Bischof, the head of the MagnumTime project at Magnum Foundation.

Before embarking on his long journey throughout Asia, Werner Bischof made a stop in Sardinia in the early 1950s. The island, having recently benefited from Italian land reform and eradicated a deadly outbreak of malaria, was at the time unjustly considered backward. Bischof was surprised to discover the island’s bucolic beauty, and adapted his photographic approach immediately. Pride, humility, the sweet happiness of childhood: the wide range of emotions are reflected in the smiles, faces and poses that Bischof captures. Generations and styles blend together in this thorough portrait of a living land. He photographs the local geography and its inhabitants, inside and outside, at different hours of the day. The knowing looks of his subjects give Bischof’s images their power to arouse our empathy.

 October 12^th - December 3^rd 2012

MAN_Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro

via S. Satta, 27 - 08100 Nuoro

Tel. 39 0784 252110

www.museoman.it

www.imagomultimedia.it

Harry Gruyaert

Photographer (Member of Magnum Photos since 1981)

Bruce Gilden
Photographer (Member of Magnum Photos since 1998)

“At the end of the day, I really have confidence in myself because I think that I can actually be proud of what I have done, considering from where I started. And it is not being arrogant. It’s just that nobody knows where you started from. Nobody knows the fears that you can have,  and I have conquered all my fears. For example, I’m someone who fears violence, and I’m afraid of someone being violent to me, but I conquer it because if I have a fear, it’s my nature to go out and try to conquer it. And when I come home, even if I haven’t taken good pictures, at least I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I have made another step in the right direction towards doing what I would like to do.”

MagnumTime interview in New York, NY 2011

Russell Miller, MagnumTime

“Life magazine was fundamental to the concept of promoting journalism in a photographic way, covering major stories with more space diverted to pictures than to words. I mean most of the writers in Life magazine were essentially writing extended captions. They might be given a little block of say, 350 words and told to make the story fit exactly. The writers were nothing, it was the photographers who were calling the shots and were the big stars of the field…us scribblers were just extended captions writers, very unimportant. I think the advent of television began to change things very dramatically but still I don’t think anyone would argue that the kind of pictures, the memorable iconic pictures that Magnum photographers have brought back from assignment all over the world, will ever, ever be eclipsed by the moving image. I think television reporting now is highly sophisticated and can make use of the fact that almost everyone can shoot video on their mobile phones. Obviously photographers can’t compete with that and are suffering from disadvantages when compared to the instant media coverage from television. But there’s no doubt in my mind that a still picture. Often a black and white picture has more impact, more power and is much more memorable than anything you are ever going to see on a television screen.”

-Russell Miller, MagnumTime Interview in Brighton UK 2011

Martin Parr, MagnumTIME

“ I mean we will be restructured but I don’t know whether the restructure is radical enough. I think we need to have less people, we need to be more independent, I think the days where photographers say ‘this is what I want to d, I come to the Magnum office and I try and get people to help me’ are gone. You have to think in terms of being on your own. It’s a very competitive market out there. There’s a brilliant new generation of new photographers so it’s not like we’re the only kids on the block. If you don’t want a job, the next person who doesn’t necessarily have to be in Magnum will be very happy to take it. So we cannot rest on our laurels, we cannot assume because we have many iconic photographers, very well-known photographers, that people are going to give us work so…photographers need to in the end, work out their own relationship to the type of work they can do in a new and difficult environment and off they go and they should do it. You can’t rely on Magnum to supply you with an income anymore. If people think that, this is very foolhardy.”

-Martin Parr, MagnumTime Interview in London, UK 2011

Ian Berry, MagnumTIME 

“I met several photographers and they all gave me advice as to how Magnum worked and what I should do, but the one piece of advice I always remember was from Elliott Erwitt. We sat down as we always did in the bistro down below, and I sort of asked Elliott what advice he would give me; and he thought for a moment and he said, ‘I’d only give you one piece of advice: never give away the copyright.” And I think that was the most valuable piece of advice I got, which I stuck to throughout, I’ve never given away the copyright on anything I’ve done, even corporate work, I still keep the copyright.”

- Ian Berry, MagnumTime Interview, Salisburg, UK, 2011

David Hurn, MagnumTIME

“Magnum is a historial phenomenon, I mean very rarely things like this happen and therefore they are worth studying. It’s worth studying because actually most of the time, Magnum in my opinion have been very positive, it’s been good, it’s been good for the world, it’s been good for photography, it’s been good for all these sort of things. And therefore it’s worth studying it.”

-David Hurn, MagnumTime Interview in Tintern Wales, 2011

Chris Steel-Perkins, MagnumTIME

“…maybe you’ll find a photographer who tells you that, but I don’t’ think anybody at Magnum sort of thinks ‘oh because my photography is great it’s gonna change the world per se”; but I think everybody believes that their photography is worth something and you know that it might affect individuals in certain ways and I think we probably all got experiences of it doing that to some extent. You know making little shifts and movements that are hopefully for the betterment of the world in some rather nebulous way, rather than to making it a worse place. I think that’s a common sense that most people in Magnum have you know. I mean that old discredited notion, or by some people discredited notion, of the ‘concerned photographer’ I think that’s still out there you know. “

 - Chris Steel-Perkins, MagnumTime Interview in London, UK 2011