“Early Magnum In & On New York” Exhibition

The National Arts Club

This event has ended.

Magnum Photos launches its 70th-anniversary program in New York City in tandem with this year’s AIPAD fair with an exhibition of photographs taken during the early years of the agency in the city in 1947-60. The show combines classic images taken in the 1950s by Magnum members such as Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Erich Hartmann and Dennis Stock along with archival pictures from the agency’s New York office. This exhibition portrays the workings of the organization and its community of enterprising members in dialogue with the city that has been Magnum Photos’ U.S. home and a source of inspiration since its founding in 1947.

As the legend goes, Magnum Photos was founded over a magnum of champagne at the Museum of Modern Art by Robert Capa and took its name from that particularly generously-sized bottle. Opening a bureau in both Paris and New York in 1947, the New York office at 55 West 8th Street was first run by Rita Vandivert, wife of photographer William Vandivert. Empty Magnum bottles serve as a reminder of Capa’s favourite drink and particular brand of joie du vivre. One sits on a shelf where a young Elliott Erwitt and his first wife sit with their baby daughter, in a candid shot early of the agency office by Werner Bischof.

The agency fizzed with pioneer spirit, its independence reshaping the relationship between magazines and photographers reclaiming copyright for the latter’s benefit. Its membership grew in size to match its founders’ ambitions – incorporating as full members Arnold, Cornell Capa, Erwitt, Glinn, Hartmann and Stock in 1954, Morath in 1955, Miller and Davidson in 1958, and Burri in 1959, amongst others over the course of that decade.

Included in the exhibit are Estate stamped prints and signed contemporary prints of some of Magnum’s best-known images of the city and its inhabitants: Davidson’s intimate portraits of the youthful, self-possessed members of a Brooklyn Gang, Stock’s iconic image of James Dean in Times Square, Erwitt’s image of his wife and first child, and Arnold’s Harlem Fashion show.

It is fitting that in its 70th year, Magnum Photos continues to explore new ways of working. With over 3.7 million unique followers on social media, it has grown to be a significant online photography brand, its newly launched website providing a space for unique editorial content to be presented and for a growing community to engage with its activity.