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May 27th, 2023, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Magnum photographer Inge Morath.

Inge Morath was born in Graz, Austria, in 1923. After studying languages in Berlin, she became a translator, then a journalist and the Austrian editor for Heute, an Information Service Branch publication based in Munich. All her life Morath would remain a prolific diarist and letter-writer, retaining a dual gift for words and pictures that made her unusual among her colleagues.

A friend of photographer Ernst Haas, she wrote articles to accompany his photographs and was invited by Robert Capa and Haas to Paris to join the newly founded Magnum agency as an editor and researcher. She began photographing in London in 1951, and joined Magnum Photos as a photographer in 1953. While working on her own first assignments, Morath also assisted Henri Cartier-Bresson during 1953-54, becoming a full member in 1955.

In the following years, Morath traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Her special interest in the arts found expression in photographic essays published by a number of leading magazines. After her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller in 1962, Morath settled in New York and Connecticut. She first visited the USSR in 1965. In 1972 she studied Mandarin and obtained a visa to China, making the first of many trips to the country in 1978.

Morath was at ease anywhere. Some of her most important work consists of portraits, but of passers-by as well as celebrities. She was also adept at photographing places: her pictures of Boris Pasternak's home, Pushkin's library, Chekhov's house, Mao Zedong's bedroom, artists' studios and cemetery memorials are permeated with the spirit of invisible people still present. Inge Morath died in New York City on 30 January 2002.

100th Birthday of Inge Morath

Rock and roll icon Tina Turner has died at the age of 83 after suffering from a long illness.

Rising to fame in the 1960s during her time as lead singer for the Ike and Tina Turner Review, her enormous stage presence and powerful vocal range lead to collaborations with major rock groups. Following her separation from her long-abusive husband, Turner concentrated on her own work and skyrocketed to icon status in the 1980s, winning six more Grammys and having many songs reach the top 40 chart. Having sold over 100 million records worldwide, Turner leaves behind an immortal legacy as one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.

Tina Turner: 1939 - 2023

On May 11th, 2023, the "Title 42" policy from the Trump and Biden administrations came to an end. This policy overrode immigration law that allowed people to ask for asylum after entering the USA illegally, which was put into place in March 2020 during the COVID pandemic and would give border patrol agents the authority to expel migrants to their home country.

Now that Title 42 is no longer in place, U.S. asylum law, which dates back to 1980, requires officials to, at the very least, give migrants who say they are fleeing danger an initial interview. That does not mean all migrants will be allowed to stay in the U.S.

In May 2019, Magnum Photographers spent two weeks on either side of the US-Mexico border in San Diego, Tijuana, Juarez and El Paso. Many have returned to the region since and continue to document an ever-evolving story. This project is called "Linea: The Border Project".

Linea: The Border Project

" (...) Essex is a gnarled and unforgiving place. It is the armpit of the east of England. A place where industrial effluence is accrued; old, unwanted things are washed up; and secrets remain well hidden. Its proximity to London and the Thames Estuary means that it has become an intestinal superhighway for the transport of goods and cargo from across the world. Fridges from South Korea, Christmas decorations from China, cars to Northern Cyprus – they shunt into and out of the historic port of Harwich on container ships the size of small towns, gantries looming over the horizon like ominous robotic creatures on a day trip from a futuristic past. Essex is a leaky, porous, slow place.
(...) In the middle of the 20 th century, Essex earned itself a reputation as a place for cheapholidays for East Enders – you could buy yourself a bit of sand and sea in the form of a self-build chalet, come down for the weekend, join in the dancing, the revelry, and the
aughter.

Photographers looking to tell the story of Essex over the years have had to grapple with the powerful temptation of reconfirming well-honed narratives involving poverty, isolation, ostentatious wealth, mildly brutish behaviour, and right-wing ideology. It seems that for many of them, the temptation is too enticing. The ‘Essex’ section of the Magnum and Getty Images archives are full of people sporting tattoos, bad teeth, no teeth, face-lifts, people who are old before their time, who look malnourished, over-nourished, rangy, poor and loud. People sniffing glue at bus stops, teddy boys and girls looking aggressive and proprietorial, drunk women at hen parties, people wearing pink tracksuits eating chips on the beach. There’s space now for new narratives, ones that welcomes the ghosts, the brave, the unruly, and embraces all the strangeness."
Extract of Jes Fernie's text "The Peculiar People", written in occasion of Lua Ribeira's photography in Essex, produced for "Essex Photo Album".

The Peculiar People

Herbert List

Turkey's general elections unfolded on May 14th, 2023, marking a crucial moment within the country's political landscape.

President Tayyip Erdoğan, leader of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) and in office since 2014, managed to secure an unprecedented third term by prevailing over his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in a runoff election held on Sunday, May 28th.

Magnum photographers have been documenting Turkey for nearly a century. In the wake of the county's next presidential election, here is a selection of images as Editor's choice and stories produced in the latest years.

Turkey's Last Decade

On Saturday 22 April, for the 16th week in a row, massive crowds of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv to protest Benjamin Netanyahu's government justice reform proposal and to defend democracy. The new law would give more power to Israeli Parliament - dominated by Netanyahu's far-right coalition - and weaken the Supreme Court that the government declared too politicised. The Supreme Court is the only one which has control of the Knesset and many fear that this disruption of the legal-system could threaten the fragile institutional balance.

Last Saturday's protests preceded a week that saw large gatherings of opponents and supporters of the reform as it commemorated Yom HaZikaron (remembrance day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism) on Tuesday 25th and celebrated the 75th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel on Wednesday 26th.

Patrick Zachmann was on the field to document the events as they unfold and ended up drawing up the portrait of a nation in turmoil.

The Nation of Israel in April 2023...

On May 6th, 2023, Charles III and Camila were crowned as King and Queen of England, the first new monarch in Britain since Queen Elizabeth acceded to the throne 70 years before.

Magnum photographers documented the general ambience felt around the event in England, including London, East Sussex and Essex.

This story is developing.

The Coronation of Charles III

King Charles III will be coronated on May 6th, 2023 at Westminster Abbey in London. He will be the first to be coronated since his late mother, Queen Elizabeth I, was crowned in 1953.

King Charles III

"This is not the first time I have been to Ukraine and the Donbas. In 2018, the war was much more frozen and was already the scene of violent fighting and war crimes. I had gone to Donetsk to portray a pro-Russian autonomous territory and felt like I had plunged into a grotesque, Soviet and anachronistic stage in a modern era.

In the cities near the frontline, life is all about survival and saving lives, both military and civilian. In a town near the Bakhmut front, an armored transport vehicle shakes the ground before arriving on a vacant lot. 4 men arrive, one of them dead, his body wrapped in a tarp, fixed outside the BPM. An ambulance pulls up next to it and the team identifies what appears to be a Ukrainian soldier, killed in the longest battle of the war: Bakhmut. I am asked to wait to publish these photos of the dead that I was able to take, and forbidden to show soldiers who look sad, writes a press officer. In other cities, such as Siversk, shelling is frequent and close - some mortars and shells fall on empty buildings or buildings almost uninhabited by civilians and soldiers entrenched in the basement.

"I have my son in Dnipro and another in Russia." Aleksandr, 68 years old, smokes cigarette after cigarette, the last inhabitant of his building, refuses to leave his damp apartment plunged in the dark, windows caulked. Siversk lives without electricity and little water. The inhabitants are anaesthetized from the bombardments, not even reacting to the whistling sound of the incoming.

Vetcher, his nom de guerre, Andrei of his real name: "I killed at least 28 Russians and received 3 medals". Without military experience, he joined after the invasion like thousands of Ukrainians wanting to defend their country. "I don't believe in God (...) but in myself and my family". I spend the day with him, showing me a daily routine where he rests near the front, searching the bombed houses for food, blankets, a pillow and a mattress - before leaving the next day for the frontline of Bakhmut with his small white van. He wrote me a week later that he had gone to Kharkiv to rest after his shift.

Bakhmut is not what one can call a strategic city, 70 000 souls lived there before becoming a battlefield where Ukrainians and Russians fight near stairwells. Russia says it controls 87% of the city, and there are only 2 valid accesses left. The destroyed vehicles on the road protect those who enter the city, bringing men, ammunition, food and leaving with the wounded and dead.

"We entered a building with my unit, on the second floor there were Ukrainians, on the second floor we didn't know who they were," said a soldier during a conversation in a hotel while resting. The forces amassed are so large on both sides that it has become more of a psychological than a tactical battle - inflicting monumental casualties on both sides for almost 9 months. For Ukraine, one official said, the battle for Bakhmut has been "a unique opportunity to kill a lot of Russians". The objective is clear: holding Bakhmut means inflicting indelible scars to break morale. Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Ministry of Defense says that Ukraine lost 11,000 soldiers in February alone. Ukraine claims that between 20,000 and 30,000 Russians died in the battle.

The bidding is on for numbers, but they remain unverifiable because of the military secrecy surrounding the count. In a town that serves as a rear base for Bakhmut, I am forbidden to enter the morgue or the hospital. But following an evacuation of the 17th brigade on what was supposed to be a quiet day, six wounded, three of them seriously. A man named Sasha is quickly identified, tourniquet tightened to the shoulder, gaping wound in the back, it is the husband of a paramedic who recognized him, shouting his name in a horrified tone before kissing him on the forehead and putting him an ambulance. The evacuation is done under the rain and the bombing near the ambulances.

The fall of Bakhmut will surely be the biggest military defeat of Ukraine, so many resources were used to defend the city.

"I can't even imagine what words Zelenskyy could come up with after that?" says Igor, a young Ukrainian journalist. During the last few weeks, I went to recaptured cities, under enemy fire and met with soldiers near the front to report on the situation in the Donbas.

I stayed mostly near the front line, painting a portrait of life in the Donbas, towns evacuated of their children, leaving only the stubborn — I photographed medical evacuations, visited trenches, artillery units, tank units, people who still lived near the front and liberated towns that are being revived."

Ukraine: Eastern Battlefield

In January of 2023, a Russian missile strike killed 40 people in a Dnipro apartment building. Days after, mourners gathered and laid down flowers at the memorial of Ukrainian writer, Lesya Ukrainka, to honor the victims. The Russian Liberation Movement, known for denouncing anti-Kremlin protesters, called the police.

The quiet protest was raided and multiple people were arrested.

Ukrainian Victims' Memorial in...

Nanna Heitmann covers the increase of Russian nationalism on display in Moscow.

Masses gathered for a patriotic concert rally at Luzhniki Stadium in February of 2023, honoring the so called "Defender of the Fatherland Day". President Putin and Russian singer-songwriter, Shaman, shared the stage as Russian flags flew high in the crowd.

Beyond the walls of the stadium, patriotic murals around Moscow aim to demonize Ukraine by tapping into Russia's victory over the Nazis in WWII. This pride echoes into the classroom, as students tour the "Victory Museum", which is dedicated to the Great Patriotic War and includes exhibitions on "Ukrainian fascism" from WWII to the Present.

Russian Nationalism on Display

Amid a broad crackdown on free speech, Olesya Krivtsova, a 20-year-old Russian student, found herself on Kremlin's official terrorist list for her use of social media in criticizing the war in Ukraine.

Krivtsova was charged with justifying terrorism, discrediting the Russian armed forces, and faced up to a decade in prison. She was placed under house arrest, where the use her phone and computer were forbidden.

Most recently, Krivtsova decided to flee the country before her courtroom verdict.

Russian Anti-War Activist Olesya...

US singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte (1927-2023).

Harry Belafonte: 1927-2023

"A people without memory is condemned to repeat their mistakes.” Guerrero is one of the Mexican States that have been most affected by organized crime; It is the second poorest and most violent state in the country. The condition of social and economic marginalization of Guerrero is becoming more evident. The crisis of the rule of law is increasingly alarming and forced disappearances are only one of the symptoms that prove it. In 2013, three of my brothers-in-law died. (They used to live in Iguala, the place from where the Ayotzinapa students disappeared). One of them was killed; the other two disappeared.) After these events I began documenting my family, and the families of other missing people, in order to capture in photographs the psychological and emotional breakdown caused by the loss of family members, especially for parents, children, and siblings. I am working with the concepts of pain, emptiness, absence, and forgetting. I’m seeking social and cultural clues that can allow me to create a personal account of the issues that families face when dealing with an unexpected death. Through the testimony and this particular issue, I want to show the relationship of intimate space to personal life experience, which is reflected in the social experience. I am thus trying to depict the situation which many families in this region face, which they live through daily, and which is one of the causes of the unraveling of Mexico’s social fabric.

KWY ediciones, Lima, Peru
1000 copies
2019
ISBN 978-612-46702-8-2

La casa que sangra. 2019.

On the first months of 2023, millions took to the streets in France to protest against the government's recent pension reform proposal. This is the first time since 2010 that the biggest workers unions were united in a common front. The reform should, among other policies, raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, causing criticism from the government's leftists opponents and the population. There were large disruptions in education, rail and air transport and refineries.

In March, as discussions in Parliament were coming to an end, the government pushed the bill through without a full vote. This decision created a new impetus among the demonstrators across France.

Jean Gaumy has been documenting the mobilisation in the Northern cities of Le Havre and Fécamp, as Peter Van Agtmael and William Keo did in Paris and Emin Ozmen in Caen.

General Strike Against Retirement...

Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Glad Tidings of Benevolence brings together Moises Saman’s photographs taken in Iraq during this period and the following years, with documents and texts relating to the war. Exploring the construction—through image and language—of competing narratives of the war, the book represents the culmination of Saman’s twenty years of work across Iraq. " (Publisher presentation).

Gost, 2023
195 x 260 mm
384 pages, 200 images
Softback
ISBN 978-1-910401-77-4

Glad Tidings of Benevolence.

On February 6, 2023, the earth trembled off Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. Two devastating earthquakes hit the region. Within a few hours, thousands of buildings crumbled down and millions of people were out in the streets. As of beginning of March, the latest reports stated that 50,000 had lost their lives and 120,000 were wounded.

Emin Özmen, Peter Van Agtmael, William Keo and Sabiha Çimen were on the field to document about the situation.

2023 Earthquake in Turkey and Syria...

"MASI Lugano opens the 2023 season with an exhibition of rediscovered works by Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916 – 1954), here presented to the public for the first time.
(…). This exhibition, organised by MASI Lugano and Werner Bischof Estate in collaboration with Fotostiftung Schweiz Winterthur, which will be hosting the second leg of the project, is aimed at showcasing a little-known side of Werner Bischof, exploring his work in colour in a comprehensive manner for the first time. To this end, the exhibition include some one-hundred colour digital prints from the original negatives from 1939 to 1950s, restored for this occasion.
After a first introductory room, where a selection of the artist's original negatives, magazines, posters, and diaries offers insight into his modus operandi, the show opens into a boundless adventure in colour, through the worlds visited and experienced by Werner Bischof throughout the course of his entire career, alternating unpublished images captured using both his Rolleiflex, with square negatives, and a Leica with its classic 35 mm film format.
This journey in colour is particularly captivating in the series of works taken across Europe using the Devin Tri-Color camera. (...). For the exhibition, some sixty images taken by Bischof with the Devin Tri-Color camera have been selected and are presented for the first time, following the complex work of restoration and colour calibration of the original glass plates. (…)
The exhibition features subjects familiar to the Swiss artist, who, like few others, was able to combine aesthetics and feeling in a perfect composition: from the formal experiments of his early years of research to his studio and fashion photographs, from the illustration of Europe's post-war period to social documentary photography, from the intimate representation of the Far East to photographic campaigns in the US, right up to his last trip to South America.
(…)

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in three different languages, englisch and german was published by Scheidegger & Spiess. And the italien version was published by Edizioni Casagrande, with texts by Tobia Bezzola, Clara Bouveresse, Luc Debraine and Peter Pfrunder.

MASI - Fondazione Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano 12.02.2023 – 02.07.2023

Fotostiftung Schweiz Winterthur 26.08.2023 – 21.01.2024

Werner Bischof: Unseen Colour

Ukrainian President Vicktor Yanukovych’s cabinet abandoned an agreement on closer trade ties in the EU, favoring closer cooperation with Russia. What began as small protests escalated to the Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution, a violent protest with at least 88 deaths. Following the Euromaidan protests and removal of Yanukovych, partnered with pro-Russia unrest in Ukraine, Russian annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Demonstrations in the Donbas area of Ukraine escalated into a war between the Ukrainian Government and Russian-backed separatist forces. Russian military vehicles crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk Oblast, which is believed to be responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September of 2014. In November, Ukrainian military reported intensive movement of Russian combat troops into separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine.

In October 2021, Russia reignited concerns of a potential invasion after moving troops and military equipment to the shared border with Ukraine. The buildup continued until Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February, 2022.

Russo-Ukrainian Conflict

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