Magnum Contact Sheets

Product Information

This landmark book, published just as the shift to digital photography threatens to render the contact sheet obsolete, celebrates the sheet as artifact, as personal and historic record, as invaluable editing tool, and as a fascinating way of accompanying great photographers as they work towards, and capture, the most enduring images of our time.

The yellow tabs are photographers I want to go back and explore further and the blue tabs are quotes or thoughts that I wanted to share. High above Paris, Marc Riboud’s Eiffel Tower Painter (1953) dances with his paintbrush – hat tilted at a jaunty angle, a cigarette dangling from his lips.This book is on my list of 13 - one of 13 books I'd take with me to keep if I had to sell my entire collection. I've personally had no trouble with it (though it seemed generally stiff at first) - it does appear to open a little better with more-use, like most books. I also enjoy working on collaborative projects, alternative processes, and developing and printing in my makeshift home darkroom.

By presenting the unpublished contact sheets behind the world's most iconic photos - including the D-Day landings, the Blitz, Malcolm X and Che Guevara - every compelling page gives us an intimate and exciting sense of walking alongside the photographer.Magnum Contact Sheets presents the work of 69 photographers – 139 contact sheets featuring some of the most famous photographs in history, along with enlargements of individual photographs. Despite the fact it's full of beautiful big photos on quality paper (150gsm matt art) many of which you will have seen before if you're serious about photography, I am a little disappointed with the selection of some of them. I’m going to jump forward to 1964 and an entry by David Hurn in which he was photographing the Beatles.

Personally I'm fairly diligent with storage and back-up of digital files (touch wood) and still have many pictures from my college days, 15 years ago. With the rise of digital photography, the contact sheet has, in many ways, been relegated an anachronism—a vestigial relic of the medium’s past. an amazing time capsule of photographic thought: a compelling journey through the picture-taking process. The account of John G Morris picture editors frustration with the tantrums and the liability of W Eugene Smith to the agency.This special and important photography book presents, for the first time, the very best contact sheets created by Magnum photographers. com are the exclusive property of the named author (except where stated otherwise) and are protected by copyright.