Art & Photography: Eve Arnold, 1912

Thursday 5 January 2012

Eve Arnold, 1912 - 2012

Eve Arnold, Bar girl in a brothel in the red light district, Havana, Cuba, 1954

Eve Arnold died on 4 January, 2012.

Arnold, the first woman member of Magnum, was best known for her portraits of both the famous (especially Marilyn Monroe) and the unknown as well as for photojournalist assignments from Harlem to China, and Russia to South Africa.

Asked by Sarah Brown of the BJP, how much power photojournalists actually have to change the things they see, Arnold [brought] her hand up to eye-level, a tiny gap between forefinger and thumb, "very little," she said. "You know in the beginning we thought we were going to change the world. I think people live in so much visual material these days, billions of photographs annually, that they grow numb after too much exposure. But it's hard. You see something and it's your profession and you want to do something about it." (Quoted from BJP obituary by Oliver Laurent)

Read obituary by Amanda Hopkinson, read/listen to an interview with John Tusa for BBC Radio 3, and listen to her Desert Island Discs!