{"id":155,"date":"2007-12-16T19:20:18","date_gmt":"2007-12-16T19:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=155"},"modified":"2007-12-16T19:20:18","modified_gmt":"2007-12-16T19:20:18","slug":"magnum-magnum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"Magnum Magnum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three posts on the Magnum blog let you take a look at three sample chapters from the incredibly weighty recently published “Magnum Magnum<\/em>” in which Magnum members write about other Magnum members and half a dozen of their photographs. The book weighs in at 6.5 kilograms, almost a stone for those who still think in old money.<\/p>\n

The samples on line are Chien-Chi Chang by Bruce Davidson<\/a>, Eve Arnold by Elliott Erwitt<\/a> <\/em>and, to me the most interesting, Antoine d’Agata<\/a> by Patrick Zachmann<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Chien-Chi Chang’s work is great, but perhaps I find it a little too pretty – but I also respond that way to some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work.<\/p>\n

I have to admit to a blind spot so far as Eve Arnold<\/em> is concerned. Of course her work is very professional photojournalism, but it seldom makes me sit up and take notice. Her portrait of Francis Bacon<\/em> – one of the six – is fine, very recognisable, tightly framed, nice colour, but really pales beside Bill Brandt<\/a>‘s photo or the artists’s own self-portraits or those head shots by John Deakin<\/a> and Dmitri Kasterine<\/a> or… And I wonder what Brian Griffin<\/a> would have made of him (I was pleased to be at Space <\/em>in Hackney yesterday on the last day of his show <\/a>there to hear him talk about his career, and about making many of the portraits.) Don’t get me wrong, I would certainly have been pleased to have taken a picture like hers, but it just seems to lack the spark of the others. The only picture among her six that strikes me as a little special is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir<\/em>, which could so easily have been extremely boring.<\/p>\n

What I like about d’Agata<\/strong>‘s work is the element of surprise or even shock. Zachman writes about this very well, and I won’t attempt to repeat or better him. Where I don’t think he really does the photographer justice is in his choice of six images, with a couple that are surely not among his best images. Take a look at his Magnum portfolio<\/a> and you will find it hard to avoid the same conclusion.<\/p>\n

You can currently see d’Agata<\/strong>‘s work at the Photographers’ Gallery in London until 27 Jan, 2008. It is worth a visit, although I think the display is rather poor compared to seeing his work on screen. As well as large images from the series Insomnia<\/span> (2003), the gallery has a montage of several hundred small images from other projects including Vortex<\/span> (2003) and Stigma<\/span> (2004), which for me are far too dominated by the way they have been put in frames and fixed to the wall. Many are also virtually impossible to see.<\/p>\n

Magnum Magnum<\/em> seems to me to be a volume making a great case for the death of the book and its replacement by some more convenient viewing method. Or else trying to be both book and trouser-press or exercise equipment. Surely it can’t be long before we can have a lightweight device with a large, paper-quality viewing screen, given that small and slightly primitive versions such as Amazon’s Kindle <\/a>have appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three posts on the Magnum blog let you take a look at three sample chapters from the incredibly weighty recently published “Magnum Magnum” in which Magnum members write about other Magnum members and half a dozen of their photographs. The book weighs in at 6.5 kilograms, almost a stone for those who still think in … Continue reading Magnum Magnum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-issues","category-photographers","category-reviews-etc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}