Magnum’s First exhibition
The Magnum’s First Exhibition presented vintage prints by eight renowned Magnum Photos photographers, offering a unique insight into the agency’s early history and shared photographic vision.
Six crates contained the original vintage prints that had been displayed between June 1955 and February 1956 in five Austrian cities: Innsbruck, Vienna, Bregenz, Graz and Linz. The photographs were accompanied by the two now-empty suitcases in which they had been carefully packed and stored for more than 50 years in the basement of the French Institute in Innsbruck.
Titled The Face of Time, the retrospective exhibition presented photo essays by eight distinguished members of Magnum Photos, the first independent photographic agency, founded in 1947 at Robert Capa’s initiative by Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour. The black-and-white photographs, mounted on differently coloured fibreboard panels, took visitors across continents and landscapes, from India and Egypt through Hungary and Dalmatia to England and France, and as far as the Andes. The exhibition included both cohesive photographic series and individual bodies of work.
The Firsts of Magnum Photos exhibition was particularly important because it offered an insight into another aspect of the agency’s activities, presenting in an exhibition format work that had typically appeared in the press. It represented the first step in a process demonstrating that the individual work, distinctive vision and exceptional talent of Magnum Photos’ photographers could also function within a shared photographic vision concerned with the world and humanity.
The first decade in the history of the photographic cooperative was marked by tragedy. By the time the exhibition was presented in Austria, two members of the founding group had already died. Robert Capa was killed in Indochina in 1954 after stepping on a landmine, while Werner Bischof had lost his life in a car accident in the Andes just nine days earlier. The Firsts of Magnum Photos exhibition therefore also served to demonstrate that Magnum continued to exist, carried forward the intellectual and artistic legacy of its founders, and that the agency’s work had lasting significance. How decisive this legacy would become in the years that followed could already be sensed from the personalities and extraordinary talent of its founders.
Curator: Gabriella Csizek
Firsts — The Exhibition
On view: 27 May 2014 – 24 August 2014
Monday–Sunday: 11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Hungarian House of Photography – Mai Manó House
1065 Budapest-Terézváros
20 Nagymező Street
