Eve Arnold joined Magnum 60 years ago and became a full member in 1957. She was just around a hundred days short of a hundred years when she died on Wednesday, though I read she had not taken any pictures for five years or so, but certainly hers was a remarkable career.
There are 50 pictures in her Magnum portfolio, and perhaps the one I like best is an image of Marlene Dietrich taken in 1952. Somehow I find much of her later work a little disappointing, though perhaps I should warm to a photographer who could make Margaret Thatcher look so ill at ease. But that is a picture that for me at least just does not work. There are also several books on the Magnum site, and for me the best is Flashback! the Fifties. Of course she was a very good photographer, but I don’t feel she really lived up to the promise of this early work, becoming an excellent and dependable but rather corporate Magnum photographer, losing the excitement.
Arnold was best known for her pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and looking through these 62 images at Magnum there are indeed some fine pictures, but also others that seem rather ordinary. Some pictures show a great intimacy and give us some insight into the life and person of the star, but others seem more typical Hollywood publicity.
It is perhaps appropriate that the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, despite being named after its owners and not the star, should be collating a list of links to tributes to Eve Arnold , all of which I imagine will be rather more fulsome than mine. The Monroe gallery site, currently showing an exhibition of work, mainly portraits, by John Loengard is also worth a look, and I note that the Dietrich picture is one of three of Arnold’s works on it.