Magnum photographers David Hurn and Nikos Economopoulos with cultural and education manager Fiona Rogers at the exhibition.PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
By Bonnie James/Deputy News Editor
There is a very strong possibility that every literate individual from late teens and above would have seen earlier some of the photographs on display at the “Magnum 65 Years” exhibition, currently on at Katara, the Cultural Village.
The images from the archives of the leading global photo agency have shaped the visual iconography and collective memory of two centuries. They have been published and re-published countless times in a variety of media over the past several years.
As explained by 78-year old David Hurn, a Magnum photographer of 60 years, who has come to Qatar along with his colleague Nikos Economopoulos for the opening of the event, most of the images in the exhibition are part of a story.
The first photograph on show is the most famous frame clicked by Robert Capa (a founder of Magnum, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour), on June 6, 1944, when the first wave of American troops landed on France’s Normandy Omaha Beach.
It was the first day of Operation Overlord, also known as D-Day, and more than 160,000 Allied troops were about to invade occupied France in the largest amphibious invasion in military history.
The shaky and grainy photo of a soldier up to his neck in seawater as he made his way towards the beach, is one of the 11 partially damage frames which survived a darkroom accident, and rated among the most dramatic battlefield photos ever taken.
Three images from Philippe Halsman’s famed “Jump” series show celebrities jumping in the air. His “Jump Book”, a collection published in 1959, featured 178 portraits shot over the previous six years.
Dennis Stock’s 1955 photograph of the 24 year old Hollywood actor James Dean (strolling through a rain-drenched Times Square in New York City), says it all about “the cultural icon of teenage disillusionment”, who died in a car crash on September 30 the same year.
The famous 1961 portrait of Malcom X by Eve Arnold, the 1966 frame of boxing legend Mohamed Ali by Thomas Hoepker, the 1984 photo of Afghan girl Sharbat Gula by Steve McCurry, and the image of a youth stopping a line of tanks during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 are among the photos on display.
The exhibition, on until February 12 at Gallery 1 in Building 13, Katara, from 10am to 10pm daily, includes a selection of interactive large-scale projections of over 5,000 images from 81 photographers.
BELOW:
1) The 1961 portrait of Malcom X by Eve Arnold.
2) The 1966 photo of boxing legend Mohamed Ali by Thomas Hoepker.
3) Three images from Philippe Halsman’s famed “Jump” series.