FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS OF MAGNUM

Student’s Name
Subject
Date
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Female Photographers of Magnum

Introduction

Magnum Photos is a global photography agency operated by its photographic

members, with offices in Tokyo, London, Paris, and New York City. As indicated by prime

supporter Henri Cartier-Bresson, the company is a network of thought, a mutual human

quality, an oddity regarding what is happening globally, a regard for what is happening and a

yearning to translate it visually. The company was established in Paris in 1947 by William

Vandivert, George Rodger, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David "Chim" Seymour, and Robert Capa,

Maria Eisner and Rita Vandivert, in light of Capa's idea. Rodger, Cartier-Bresson, and

Seymour were all missing from the meeting where the agency was established. 1

These photographers held that the most significant activity of a photojournalist is

recording the human state in the external world as humanely as could be expected under the

circumstances. The organization was set up to allow photographers to decide their very own

destiny and not be obligated to magazine or paper editors with plans that may jeopardize the

trustworthiness of the photographer. To bolster this undertaking, photographers at Magnum

hold the copyright of their photos.

Its library is a living account updated day by day with new work from over the globe.

The library houses all the work created by its photographers and some exceptional

assortments by outside participants. There are roughly over one million photos in both print

and straightforwardness in the physical library, with more than 500,000 pictures accessible on

the web.

The Magnum brand has been recognized by a specific visual style and through a

scope of other differentiation techniques utilized by its members from 1947 until now.

1
Ryan, James R., and U. K. Cornwall. "Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World." (2016): 67-
68.
 2

Magnum Photos' most clear distinctive trademark is its custom of articulating to the

renowned photojournalists, frequently at the stature of their profession. Since it is an agency,

a document, and a group of photographers with a custom, this paper aims at showing how

Magnum's female differ or share the same arts in their works. Magnum photographers have

recorded enormous numbers of the world's significant events and persons since the 1930s and

built up a notoriety for incorporating narration, documentation, and aesthetics. In catching

snapshots of political and historical significance, they have been distinguished for their

fearlessness and dauntlessness. 2 They have delivered an enormous number of distributions,

articles, and publications and run constant worldwide occasions and workshops. They depict

themselves as, 'home to the pictures that shape how people think, how they recall, and how

they see.' There has never been a topical time to discuss female portrayal in photography, not

just the quantity of female photographers working in the male-dominated photojournalism

industry, but besides concerning how women themselves are delineated.

The following are the female participants of Magnum since its founding to date:

1. Eve Arnold (1912-2012)

2. Susan Meiselas

3. Lise Sarfati

4. Alessandra Sanguinetti

5. Lua Ribeira

6. Suzy Parker

7. Inge Morath (May 27, 1923 – January 30, 2002)

8. Susan Meiselas

9. Diana Markosian

10. Abigail Heyman (1942–2013)

2
Mourelo, Mariola. "Magnum Stories." Afterimage 32, no. 6 (2005): 45.
 3

11. Cristina García Rodero

12. Martine Franck (2 April 1938 – 16 August 2012).

13. Carolyn Drake

14. Bieke Depoorter

15. Cristina de Middel

16. Olivia Arthur

17. Marilyn Silverstone

18. Newsha Tavakolian

The works of the photographs will be compared and contrasted based on different

documentary styles of photography.

Similarities and Differences

Fashion Photography

Fashion photography is a collection of photography that is committed to showing

clothing and other fashion things. Fashion photography is frequently led to advertising or

fashion magazines, for example, Elle or Vogue. Fashion photography has built up its

aesthetics in which the fashions and garments are improved by the proximity of exceptional

adornments or locations.

This type of photography has been evident by various Magnum's female artists. Eve

Arnold, while at The New School in the 1950s, shot a fashion exposition set in an Abyssinian

church in Harlem, which was a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement. The collections

were later distributed in England's Picture Post. The pictures (Image 1) account for a sublime

1950's subculture where up to 300 fashion exhibitions were conducted yearly, a large number

of them displaying garments that local seamstresses made or which illustrations made

themselves. Some of them were an unobtrusive type of dissent at the white fashion industry

in New York and were an exceptional wellspring of pride in the black community.
 4

Image 1. Charlotte ‘Fabulous’ Stribling 1950. 3

Inge Morath, through her Beauty and the Beast Fashion Show collection, did also

include her works in fashion photography. Morath's photos are beautiful, but unlike other

Magnum female counterparts, they are self-reflexive articulations about photography itself,

and the photographic development of magnificence. In her collection the Beauty and the

Beast Fashion Show, for instance, Morath captured the runway models from behind, in

unflattering outline, and outdoors encompassed by staring spectators and photographers; in

one of her works (Image 2), she twists the model's back and neck to grotesquely pursue the

line of her dog's back and neck. In this, the dog is to the model, and the model is a submissive

extra to the photographer.

3
Magnum. Harlem Fashion. Eve Arnold rewrites the codes of fashion photography in 1950s Harlem, New York.
2019. Retrieved from: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/fashion/eve-arnold-fashion-in-harlem/
 5

Image 2. 4

Another female contributor to this documentary photography is Suzy Parker, who was

an American model and Actress. Her works can be seen in the Chanel advert where the image

is in black-and-white, and the differentiation of the colors is viably utilized to carry the

youngster into the focal point of consideration. In this advert (Image 3), the woman is

unquestionably not alone. There are two men in the image, on both of her sides holding her

hand. They are at the entrance of a room that one hardly sees but sees just the window

curtains. The woman is wearing a white dress in a fantasy fashion, and the men are wearing

dark suits. In this image, it is clear that, unlike her fellow female photographers, Parker

approached the fashion through magazines and adverts.

4
Magnum. Archive - Showcase: Fashion Gallery. 2019. Retrieved from:
https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1HRGM3YZF
 6

Image 3.

In numerous views, this advert was a reaction to the time. Parker was an American

diva, and she purported the new economic and cultural standpoint. The 1950s are usually

associated with the golden era of America. The nation was fueled by hopefulness and success

- and by the democratization of allurement. Nonetheless, dissimilar to in the interwar years,

when Hollywood's pictures of American life were experienced as an unadulterated dream,

after 1945, these were associated with a feasible future. The lifestyle of an entire nation

seemed to resound with allure.

Inge Morath also participated in a fashion documentary. Through Fashion and

Celebrity collection, Morath presented a measurement of around 200 colored and black-and-

white photos that integrate the numerous different subjects analyzed by her during her
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vocation -unlike her female photographers mainly influenced by events or geographical

locations. In these photos, Morath portrays her gentle amusingness and her perfect

affectability as she catches the defenselessness of her subject, opening themselves to her

(Image 4). It is self-evident that Morath, like a photographer with an exceptional and

dependable vision for the growth of new types of imagination from conventional ones. The

profundity and the inspiration for her vision are portrayed by her words: "endurance ought to

never be permitted to render the past innocuous."

Image 4. Marilyn by Inge Morath - Joey Shaw - Fashion and Celebrity.

War Documentary

War Documentary is considered to have started in 1848 when John McCosh took

photos of the Second Anglo-Sikh War. McCosh was a surgeon in the Bengal Army and
 8

documented the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852. Inge Morath, similar to other female

Magnum partners, in the early long periods of her profession, she was roused by a principal

humanism, molded as much by war experience as by its languishing shadow over post-war

Europe. This inspiration developed into her mature work, integrated into a motif as she

reported the continuance of the human spirit under circumstances of change and coercion.5

Tense, close-up photos of war, enduring and disaster accentuate the photographer's

boldness in ghastliness and is a statement of the macho persona typical to the Magnum style,

and regular to both male and female photographers. George Rodger, David Seymour, and

Robert Capa helped in pioneering war photography amid the Spanish Civil War and WWII,

before they established Magnum, which examined out close-up shots as with the case of

Morath’s styles. What further identifies Inge Morath's work from that of her peers is the

consistency of her eye for life's splendid drama. Whether the case of shooting celebrations or

artists' studios, in video form sets or in the street; in the case of capturing famous people or

outsiders, in the city or on a fashion runway, she perpetually experienced her surroundings as

a platform for the presentation of life, each of her subjects contributing similarly to its beauty.

5
Morath, I. Inge Morath: 101 Fashion & Celebrity Photos. (2012). Retrieved from: http://ingemorath.org/inge-
morath-101-fashion-celebrity-photos/
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Image 6. Nicaragua: From Still to Moving. 6

Susan Meiselas through Nicaragua: From Still to Moving works contributed to

fashion photography. By catching Nicaraguan agitators in fresh, rich color, Meiselas brought

the wicked occasions of the contention to the world's consideration. Her symbolism of

Nicaragua in the late 1970s delivered famous pictures of a battle that indicates the great effect

of the photo in conveying human brutality. In a calm photograph of defiance, a young man is

depicted painting a reminiscent mural of a veiled revolutionary holding a firearm. The spiked

fencing of the divider indicates the strain penetrating Nicaragua around then, in spite of the

certainty of the subject's position and activity in making the possibly ignitable picture.

The American picture creator drew near to the progressives (truly: her organization

urged her to utilize a 400 millimeter lens for dread her closeness to risk was excessively

extraordinary) in the late 70s, as the Somoza family's 40-year fascism was undermined and in

6
Magnum. Nicaragua: From Still to Moving. 2019. Retrieved from:
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/susan-meiselas-nicaragua-from-still-to-moving/
 10

the long run toppled by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, or the Sandinistas)

in a turbulent, brutal period.

Ethnographic Photography (Culture)

Ethnographic Photography derives its title from the anthropological word

"ethnography," the scientific examination of certain cultures. In the nineteenth century,

photographers would regularly venture out to remote pieces of the world to bring back (or

send back as postcards) pictures of different societies and people to the Europeans. This

famous practice made a sort of photographic in the travel industry. This type of photography

can be observed in Inge Morath's works. For Morath, the coherence between present and past

is communicated through the assemblage, in a solitary photographic frame, of Zoroastrian,

conventional Islamic, and contemporary Iranian life (Image 7); in the antique engineering of

the bazaar, for instance, where umbrellas and boots dangle from the roof and buyers wear

chadors. Such pictures offer a reconfiguration of the customary comprehension of

"conclusive minute" as a meeting up of patent chronicled, as opposed to optical components.7

Unlike Cartier-Bresson, who also photographed in Iran as a hallmark of his extensive

work in Asia, and with Lessing, who operated there on a specific storyline (the 1952 insect

plague), Morath was the first to concentrate extensively on the nation itself. Looking to

provide details regarding the bigger culture through experiences with its different electorates,

Morath's photos skirt on the anthropological in their consideration regarding normal parts of

life – family, work, strict and artistic articulation, garments, design, and so forth – in all the

communities that she visited.

7
Inge Morath Org. Inge Morath, Iran. (2009). Retrieved from http://ingemorath.org/inge-morath-iran-preface/
 11

Image 7. Inge Morath: A Woman in Iran, 1956

The reemergence of these topics in Morath's photos would seem to negate Delpire's

depiction of her hasty working in Iran. Still, the appearing nonattendance of a publication

motivation is one of her work's eminent attributes. Morath's consideration regarding what

Azar Nafisi alluded to as "the inclinations of modernity and custom" that confer side to side

in Iran served to guarantee the feeling that she wished to pass on of the richly layered account

– also clashing and now and amicable – of an old culture on the move.

Another Magnum artist portraying such type of photography is Lua Ribeira through

her Catholic pictures. Lua portrays her work as being molded by her Catholic childhood, and

unlike her counterparts, her works are based on the dread of death. In Catholicism, there is a

solid differentiation between the pain and battle between the physical body in its life on earth

and the fantastical experience to heaven and eternity. Lua aims at conveying this account

using pictures metaphor. Lua s work is additionally vigorously impacted by paintings. Her

photos create a reflection of Christian Art and religious compositions that portray mortality

and death using imagery, folklore, and dramatization (Image 8). Even though the photos

delineate real individuals, the pictures are staged as in the case of the image below. Her cast

of characters is vigorously presented and has all the earmarks of being performed in the
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camera. The images are taken in an exceptionally figurative manner of her work to be built.

Unlike her Magnum counterparts, Lua draws a ton of pictures from loads of different sources

as a major aspect of her visual research. She regularly pictures individuals in the streets as a

major aspect of this exploration, however, her final products are constantly built photos and

not minutes got on camera, which she creates by first drawing out her arrangements for the

picture.

Image 8. Charity dressed in red carrying Child Jesus. Cordoba. Spain. 2019.8

The Catholic Church has consistently seen with some lament these manifestations of

important strictness, which developed past the ability to control the authorities and the

strictures of the Church, perhaps present in a looser and more celebratory domain than the

experts might have wished. Her short arrangement of photos fits into ongoing photographic

research. Yet, it is more relevantly part of a bigger, individual investigation of the capacities

that strict and fanciful manifestations in general public as methods for understanding dynamic

thoughts like life, enduring, death, and profound ethics.

The works of Cristina García Rodero, also relate to this type of photography. While in

Venezuela, where Maria Lionza is the focal figure of perhaps the biggest religion, similar to

Lua, her faction is a blend of African, indigenous, and Catholic convictions like Caribbean

santeria. Maria Lionza is perceived as a goddess of nature, love, harmony, and congruity. The

8
Magnum. The Visions. Lua Ribeira captures the peculiarities of Semana Santa Chiquita de Puente Genil. 2019.
Retrieved from: https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/religion/lua-ribeira-the-visions-semana-santa-
chiquita-de-puente-genil/
 13

faction of this legendary Venezuelan character goes back to the fifteenth century, and this is

how it keeps on being done since 1998-2008. One of her pictures shows men with naked

torso, encompassed by incense smoke and candles, making progress as a means of

worshiping Maria Lionza (Image 9).

Image 9. García Rodero.9

Photo-Essay

A photo essay is a collection of photographs that make a series of feelings to the

watcher. It will regularly depict pictures in profound enthusiastic stages. They range from

completely photographic endeavors to photographs with subtitles or little remarks to full

9
Word Press. Cristina Garcia Rodero. Retrieved from:
https://i2.wp.com/fotogasteiz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/maria-lionza-diosa-agua-
rodero.jpg?w=315&ssl=1
 14

content expositions outlined with photographs. This type of documentary has fewer

contributions from female Magnum artists compared with male photographers.

A good instance is through Susan Meiselas's in Silence: Maternal Mortality in India

work. As indicated by the reports, Susan describes that every year, a large portion of a

million women around the world die in childbirth. Furthermore, within this, 20% happens to

be in India.

Image 10. Indian Women. 10

Through her act of humanity, Meiselas depicts the emotional distress in the image

above by portraying the background state of the healthcare and unhappy faces of the women.

Social Documentary

Social narrative photography or is the account of what the world resembles, with a

social as well as an ecological core interest. It is a type of documentary photography to draw

public notice on social problems. It might likewise allude to a socially primary classification

of photography perpetrated to indicating the life of oppressed or depressed individuals.

Through her works, Meiselas adopted a different strategy to portray such a type of

documentary photography. In the carnival stripper pictures, she integrates the visual intensity

of a Winogrand road scene and a Diane Arbus-like sensitivity for a distinct, extraordinary

10
Susan Meiselas. Maternal Mortality, India (2009). Retrieved from:
http://www.susanmeiselas.com/stories/human-rights/maternal-mortality/#id=intro
 15

world with the devices of a social researcher—for this situation, camera, and recording

device. 11This methodology developed from her enthusiasm for human studies, which started

with her works at a Navajo reservation in high school and later in classes at Sarah Lawrence

College in 1970. Her camera choice as her main tool for investigating and understanding her

general surroundings was, to some degree, helpful. It started with classes she took with

photography lecture by Len Gittleman and Barbara Norfleet, partner of the department of

visual and environmental examinations, when Meiselas was seeking after a master's in visual

education at Harvard.

In 1991, Meiselas went to Kurdistan with anthropologist Clyde Snow of Human

Rights Watch to account for the uncovering of the genocide remains committed in the

Kurdish towns of Arbil and Koreme beneath Saddam Hussein. Attempting to comprehend the

pulverization and human catastrophe she discovered, unlike her colleagues, she perceived

that she could not picture the present without comprehending the past. She expected to

develop a history and understand that she could construct one from photography works and

columnists who had gone before her.

11
Magnum. Carnival Strippers: Susan Meiselas’s seminal work presents a nuanced view on the dynamics of
America’s traveling ‘girl shows’ in the early 1970s. Retrieved from:
https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/performing-arts/carnival-strippers-by-susan-meiselas/
 16

Image 11. Genocide Remains.12

Lise Sarfati also, through her works, participated in this type of photography. Image

12 below is from Lise's work in the book "Invisible Revolutions" in 1998. This image is in

Paris, France metro at the Chatelet station. A wide range made the book of photographers,

and each gave their translation of what they accepted and considered France's culture. By

seeing this photo, one can see the lifelessness and exposed state in this metro station. The

motivation behind this photo is to show the viewer the sterility and bluntness of France's

society. There is no life or energy here, just a feeble tram station.

Image 12. France Subway. 13

A distinct contribution of this type of documentary can be observed in Evelyn

Sanguinetti's "The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their

Dreams." As opposed to taking a conventional account position when shooting the pair,

Sanguinetti chose to rather concentrate on the young ladies' fantasies, in a story that would

graph their dynamic minds. Even though the physical changes of these young ladies are seen

as they develop into youthful grown-ups, Sanguinetti prevails with regards to depicting their

mental growth in this rural area, catching the quintessence of their expectations and

12
Harrison, J. A Lens on History: Photographer Susan Meiselas's quest to understand via images. 2010.
Retrieved from: https://harvardmagazine.com/2010/11/a-lens-on-history
13
Women Photographers. Women In Photography. Retrieved from:
https://womenphotographers.weebly.com/lise-sarfati.html
 17

yearnings. As the connection between the two young ladies altered after some time, questions

emerge from the work which investigates the progression of time, and the inescapable

substances about edging nearer to death. The young ladies, once close, appear at to have

drifted with time, showing up alone in the photos, or quickly nearby some auxiliary character

in their lifelong play.

Image 13. Alessandra Sanguinetti the Madonna. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2001.

Alessandra Sanguinetti I Magnum Photos.14

Conclusion
Throughout the history of photography, female photographers have been striving to

keep up with the male-dominated industry. Based on this struggle, various agencies, such as

the Magnum, have been spearheading the notion of gender by striving to incorporate various

female artists since its inception in 1947. For female photographers to succeed and become

popular in the industry, they had to come up with new styles and utilize all the available types

14
Magnum. Evelyn Sanguinetti. Retrieved from:
https://content.magnumphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/cortex/nyc68967-overlay.jpg
 18

of photography such as fashion photography, war documentaries, ethnographic photography,

photo essay, and social documentaries. With these types of photography, various Magnum

female photographers have been evident to share a lot in terms of their works while at the

same time having different similarities. Magnum photography is majorly based on the theme

of humanitarianism; hence, most of the female artists shared a lot in common with this theme.

Most of the artists differed on the basis or reasons for taking their pictures based on different

societies, time, and events. The most prevailing similarity within the research was the theme

of war, which highly relates to the state of emotional distress. Unlike Magnum male

photographers, females are evident to cover fewer types of documentary photography. Such

calls for the need to come up with strategies that ensure female photographers have access to

any field of photography despite the traditional dominance in some areas by men.

Photographic truth, as with other truths, is based on human nature, understanding, history,

belief, and culture.

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References

Harrison, J. A Lens on History: Photographer Susan Meiselas's quest to understand via

images. 2010. Retrieved from: https://harvardmagazine.com/2010/11/a-lens-on-

history

https://womenphotographers.weebly.com/lise-sarfati.html
Inge Morath Org. Inge Morath, Iran. (2009). Retrieved from http://ingemorath.org/inge-

morath-iran-preface/

Magnum. Archive - Showcase: Fashion Gallery. 2019. Retrieved from:

https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1HRGM3YZF

Magnum. Carnival Strippers: Susan Meiselas’s seminal work presents a nuanced view on the

dynamics of America’s traveling ‘girl shows’ in the early 1970s. Retrieved from:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/performing-arts/carnival-strippers-by-

susan-meiselas/

Magnum. Evelyn Sanguinetti. Retrieved from: https://content.magnumphotos.com/wp-

content/uploads/2016/04/cortex/nyc68967-overlay.jpg

Magnum. Harlem Fashion. Eve Arnold rewrites the codes of fashion photography in 1950s

Harlem, New York. 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-

culture/fashion/eve-arnold-fashion-in-harlem/

Magnum. Nicaragua: From Still to Moving. 2019. Retrieved from:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/susan-meiselas-nicaragua-from-

still-to-moving/

Morath, I. Inge Morath: 101 Fashion & Celebrity Photos. (2012). Retrieved from:

http://ingemorath.org/inge-morath-101-fashion-celebrity-photos/

Mourelo, Mariola. "Magnum Stories." Afterimage 32, no. 6 (2005): 45.

 20

Ryan, James R., and U. K. Cornwall. "Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern

World." (2016): 67-68.

Susan Meiselas. Maternal Mortality, India (2009). Retrieved from:

http://www.susanmeiselas.com/stories/human-rights/maternal-mortality/#id=intro

Women Photographers. Women In Photography. Retrieved from:

Word Press. Cristina Garcia Rodero. Retrieved from:

https://i2.wp.com/fotogasteiz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/maria-lionza-

diosa-agua-rodero.jpg?w=315&ssl=1