Anthony Luke's not-just-another-photoblog Blog: Magnum Photographer

Showing posts with label Magnum Photographer. Show all posts

Monday, May 7, 2018

Photographer Profile ~ Sergio Larrain

Sergio Larrain (1931-2012, born in Valparaiso, Chile) grew up in Chile but left at age eighteen to study at the University of California, Berkeley. Upon his return he began taking photographs in the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso; and the early purchase of two images by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, reassured him in his chosen profession.

Impressed by Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs, Larrain presented the photographer his work on los abandonados (street children in Santiago) during a trip to Europe. Cartier-Bresson then invited Larrain to join Magnum in 1960; around this time he also began what would become a legendary project on Valparaiso with a text by poet Pablo Neruda.

London. The City. 1958-1959
© Sergio Larrain / Magnum Photos

London, England 1958-1959

“I saved my first money…and bought my first Leica, not because I wanted to do photos, but because it was the most beautiful object that one could buy (also a typewriter)… for the first time in my life, I had money to buy what I wanted.” – Sergio Larrain, in a letter to Agnes Sire, who was the desk editor of Magnum (Paris) for 20 years.

Limón Soda, Valparaíso. Photograph: Sergio Larrain/Magnum

BOLIVIA. Potosi. 1957

“Photography is a walk alone in the universe…The conventional world veils your vision, for photography you have to find a way to remove the veil.” – Sergio Larrain

“…People that do creative work, have to isolate themselves, they are all hermits, one way or another…Picasso would live in a world of happiness, with his children and women as you have seen…far from ugliness, sadness…” ~ Sergio Larrain

CHILE. Santiago. 1963.

London, England 1959.

<div class="artist"><strong>Sergio Larrain</strong></div><div class="title_and_year"><em>Bar Los Siete Espejos (Bar of Seven Mirrors), Valparaiso, Chili, 1963</em></div><div class="medium">Vintage silver gelatin print</div><div class="dimensions">17.2 x 25.5 cm</div><div class="signed_and_dated">Dated in pencil on verso, various annotations in red pen and black pencil. Magnum artist copyright wetstamp on verso</div>

Image result for sergio larraÃn from london 1958 59

Sergio Larrain getting a shoe shine, London, England.

Sergio Larrain from eclipse libros on Vimeo.

Sergio Larrain, Retrospective from Les Rencontres d'Arles on Vimeo.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Interview with Magnum photographer ~ Christopher Anderson

VICE visits Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson at his studio in Brooklyn to talk about some of his past work and the life-changing experience of boarding a handmade boat that sank in the Caribbean. He tells us that his current project of photographing New York is part of his artistic growth and an effort to turn inward. As we follow him on assignment, Anderson explains that he’s not just focused on the task at hand, but also interested in the way his photographs build upon each other through the years.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Advice for Young Photographers from Magnum Photographer Christopher Anderson

"Forget about the profession of being a photographer. First be a photographer and maybe the profession will come after. Don’t be in a rush to pay your rent with your camera. Jimi Hendrix didn’t decide on the career of professional musician before he learned to play guitar. No, he loved music and created something beautiful and that THEN became a profession. Larry Towell, for instance, was not a “professional” photographer until he was already a “famous” photographer. Make the pictures you feel compelled to make and perhaps that will lead to a career. But if you try to make the career first, you will just make shitty pictures that you don’t care about."

~Christopher Anderson
[via Aphotoeditor]

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Photographer Profile ~ Josef Koudelka

Josef Koudelka, born in Moravia (1938), made his first photographs while a student in the 1950s. About the same time that he started his career as an aeronautical engineer in 1961 he also began photographing Gypsies in Czechoslovakia and theater in Prague. He turned full-time to photography in 1967. The following year, Koudelka photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague, publishing his photographs under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family. In 1969, he was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal for those photographs.

Koudelka left Czechoslovakia for political asylum in 1970 and shortly thereafter joined Magnum Photos. In 1975, he brought out his first book Gypsies, and in 1988, Exiles. Since 1986, he has worked with a panoramic camera and issued a compilation of these photographs in his book Chaos in 1999. Koudelka has had more than a dozen books of his work published, including most recently in 2008 Invasion Prague 68.

He has won significant awards such as the Prix Nadar (1978), a Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), a Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991), and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1992). Significant exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; the Hayward Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
[via magnum photo]