On April 4th, 1968 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while he stood on the balcony of a Memphis motel. Despite the fact that James Earl Ray had plead guilty to the murder, he spent the rest of his life trying to reverse his plea. Many theories exist which claim that Ray was not the shooter or that he was just one of many who were involved.
More than 300,000 people attended Dr. King's memorial service. Among them was Attorney General and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement who would also be assassinated two months later. Following King's death, riots broke out in more than one hundred US cities. The Vietnam War, the assassinations, US presidential elections and revolutions abroad would make 1968 one of the most painful years of the century.
After this tragic year the Civil Rights movement continued on though it had lost it's shining star. Though Dr. King was gone, the messages of this Nobel Prize winning humanitarian continues to be taught and practiced throughout the world.
Pervez Musharraf came to power on October 12, 1999, ousting Nawaz Sharif, the elected Prime Minister, dismissed the national and provincial legislative assemblies, assumed the title of Chief Executive and became Pakistan's de facto head of government, thereby becoming the fourth Army chief of Pakistan to have assumed executive control. Since then, he has been actively supported by western countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. Later in 2001, Musharraf appointed himself to the office of President of Pakistan.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney yesterday announced the end of his campaign for president. Christopher Anderson followed him through the Michigan Primaries in January.
We'll end the first year of the Magnum Blog with some New Year's Eve impressions by Bruce Gilden. We wish you a healthy, peaceful and happy New Year! Thank's a lot for your support during 2007! And here is a link to our Happy New Year wishes from Magnum In Motion.
Any exciting New Year's wishes out there that you'd like to share?
LIFE Magazine, created by TIME founder Henry Luce, published its first issue on November 23, 1936. That was exactly 71 years ago.
LIFE always set standards in photojournalism, until 1972 it was published weekly when it was unfortunately shut down. Six years later, in 1978 LIFE was published again. This time as a monthly magazine and according to Dirck Halstead, who wrote a very interesting article entitled The Last of LIFE, "it was a pale imitation of its former self". The monthly magazine was discontinued in 2000 only to be published again as a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to April 2007.
I did miss the glory days of LIFE magazine but its spirit and the work of some of the greatest photographers in the world who photographed for LIFE shall not be forgotten. This one goes out to the old LIFE magazine.
Nikos Economopoulos is a Magnum photographers who's work I really, really dig. Frankly, I am under the impression that his work doesn't get the attention it deserves by the photo community out there. Well, it's a bit hard to find more information on Nikos Economopoulos and his work outside of the Magnum website. I found an interesting article by Frank Viviano called "The Balkan Tribe" in which he also talks about him. And I found out that Nikos has his own workshop series "On The Road" which I didn't know about until recently.
So far I never had the chance to meet him but I truly hope that I'll soon be able to have a little conversation with him for the Magnum Blog. Until then you should really look at his books "Economopoulos, Photographer" or "The Balkans". This is exactly the kind of black and white photography that drew me into photography in the first place.
Thomas Alva Edison, who held approximately 1.500 patents, is often refered to as the inventor of the light bulb. He is not, but he was able to bring an old idea to life. On this day in 1879 he managed to test a light bulb that lasted for 13,5 hours. 356 of his patents dealt with electric lighting and the generation and distribution of electricity. Thank you Thomas Edison.
It's been six years since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Our thoughts go out to the victims of the attacks in New York as well as to the victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please watch the September 11 Magnum In Motion Essay with photographs from 18 Magnum photographers.
Vacation time is over and it seems like the last days of summer are coming. I am looking forward to a productive fall, summertime and the blog statistics showed that people have either been on vacation or prefered to spend their time out on the beach, in the mountains, hanging out in bars or at BBQs. Which I wish I could have done as well...
So here is a question to you - assuming your summer is over as well: What have you done last summer? Floating around on tubes?
Wayne Miller's "Chicago's South Side" reminds me of one of my favorite photography books: Bruce Davidsons "East 100th Street". Until now I haven't been aware of Miller's Chicago's South Side. Shame on me...
From 1946 to 1948, Wayne Miller documented the daily lives of African-Americans in the post-World War II era in Chicago. His photographs capture both a developing cultural renaissance and the grim economic realities that faced Chicago's largest black community.
In case you are in France, in Chalon-sur-Saône to be precise, you should not miss his "Chicago's South Side" exhibition which is up until September 30th.
Chien-Chi Chang's books "The Chain", "I Do I Do I Do" or "Double Happiness" are well known, his work on New York's Chinatown, that he worked on for many, many years and still works on, is extremely remarkable. When I think of Chien-Chi's photographs I almost exclusively think of his black and white work.
Occasionally however, Chien-Chi also shoots in color and I think his color photographs are less known. You should take a look at New York's Chinatown in color or at his story from 1999 on homeless people in Bucharest. The photograph above is from that story. Comments are as always appreciated.
In my humble opinion one of the most impressive photography books: "Pleine mer" (the english version is called "Men at sea"). See more photographs here. What do you think?
See more photographs from Utopia, Texas taken by Alec Soth in this Magnum album. And you might also be interested in his more recent personal blog post entitled "Reflections in the helmet shield". Looking through a mirror or a window? Comments appreciated.
Villagers looking at slides of themselves, Yumthang, North Sikkim. Marilyn Silverstone/Magnum Photos
In an effort to bring more photography on the Magnum Blog I am starting a new series of posts today called "Photo of the week". I admit... Posting a photo of the week is not a new idea but it's a nice way to share some more photographs from Magnum's enormous archive with you. Not much text - if text at all - other than the caption, just some visual joy.
Given the fact that Magnum's online archive currently consists of about 400.000 photographs I don't really have to worry about running out of adequate images. Even if every single Magnum photographer would stop shooting right now we'd have enough photographs for the next 7.692 years. Under these circumstances chances are pretty low that we will live to see the end of the "Photo of the week" series...
Today's photo of the week is a pretty well known one by Marilyn Silverstone but let's see which jewels the archive brings to the day of light that are less known...
