This is the summer of Magnum Photos. The celebrated agency for photojournalists began in 1947, and I’ve counted at least six shows in New York conceived to pay homage through August. The main event is a large, sprawling survey entitled “Magnum Manifesto,” at the International Center of Photography. The museum, by the way, was started by Cornell Capa, whose older brother, Robert Capa, was one of the four founders of Magnum and probably did more than anyone to define its spirit.
The older Capa was a memorable figure – a photographer–adventurer who regarded photography as a virile, Hemingway-esque undertaking, something you did outside of a studio, preferably in a war zone. He liked to say, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” and by close he meant close to danger.
Instead of rehashing its best-known images, the show at ICP directs welcome attention toward lesser-known works that do not always seem Magnum-ish. Who knew that Erich Hartmann specialized in photographs of bread and its makers? His “Immigrant’s House,” of 1958, is a pristinely stunning image of a kitchen table set with three soup bowls and two half-eaten loaves of bread. Contemporary photographers, by contrast, especially Susan Meiselas and Alex Soth, work in color while remaining loyal to the Magnum legacy of humanist reportage.
Unfortunately, the show as a whole feels over-curated and over-designed. Every image in the show was re-printed for the occasion, and some are as small as post-cards. Too often you find dozens of photographs clustered together on a wall according to themes that are too broad to be helpful (e.g. “An Inventory of Differences.”) Also, it does seem odd that a show about Magnum and the documentary impulse would contain so many unlabeled or at least hard-to identify works – including those in the final gallery, which appear in a video flashing across three jumbo-sized screens.
Magnum was never known as a champion of female creativity, so it is good to have a separate show, “Women Seeing Women,” at the Staley-Wise Gallery. This small, well-chosen exhibition pairs a dozen female Magnum photographers with as many female fashion photographers, which might sound like so many apples and oranges. After all, fashion photography tends to be viewed as an exercise in manufactured elegance, the antithesis of the supposedly authentic experiences of the street. But the truth is you never know where you will find soulfulness, and there’s plenty to go around at Staley-Wise. Inge Morath, the late photojournalist, contributes a striking black-and-white view of a small group of Iranian women disappearing down a rainy street in Tehran. Deborah Turbeville also gives us a streetscape of women clad in black: a fashion photograph set in Italy, with half a dozen women standing around in their Valentino gowns. Yes, they are glamorous, but the frieze of black figures also suggests a sense of Greek tragedy, as if these women, too, are locked into fates they did not choose.
“Magnum Manifesto”, International Center of Photography, through September 3, 2017
Staley-Wise Gallery: “Women Seeing Women,” through August 31, 2017
Also on view, Henri Cartier-Bresson “India in Full Frame” at the Rubin Museum, through September 24, 2017.
Editor's note: The captions and credits for the images from the Staley-Wise gallery have been corrected.