Looking backstage: the ways how Magnum photographers work

Magnum photographers definitely count among the biggest, most popular and most influential photographers of our time. Their names have gained cult status and everybody has heard of them. Elliott Erwitt. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Robert Capa. Steve McCurry. And many other famous names from the past 70 years.

Thanks to a friend I came across a book that has captured me so much that I’d like to share it with you. It reveals us the ways the photographers work. On 500 pages and seemingly five cinema-grams the book presents the contact sheets of the master photographers.

Contact sheets reconstruct the history of such icons: How were they created, what happened before and afterwards? Was it “coincidence” or just the right moment? Would I have chosen another photo?

In the book the contact sheet also comes with a photo that’s toured the world and that’s in most cases commented on by the photographers themselves. Thus the most intimate working material of the most influential photographers is revealed.

Nowadays in our digital age this process can hardly be made visible anymore. Many critics speak of a loss of evidential authenticity. In this sense the book is an invaluable historic document.

I ordered the volume and I’m surely going to spend many hours reading it. It’s a fantastic collection of timeless relevant images, it provides astonishing insights into a classical analogue selection process and it reveals to us some background stories of how the most popular photos in the world were created.