B.

In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers–a touring exhibition brought to New Zealand by Kodak New Zealand Limited. The first co-operative agency for photographers, Magnum Photos Inc., continues to count among its members the ranking contributors in the reporting and documenting of world events. This landmark exhibition traces Magnum's history with three hundred and ten photographs that together provide a powerful and poignant survey of our time in picture format.

Made by sixty-four photographers working as members of Magnum, the photographs, which are in colour and black and white, comprise both established masterworks and previously unexhibited images. Among those members whose work is included are Magnum's founders photojournalists Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, "Chim" and George Rodger–as well as such noted photographers as Eve Arnold, Werner Bischof, Rene Burri, Bruce Davidson, Raymond Depardon, Elliott Erwitt, Ernst Haas, Josef Koudelka and Sebastio Salgado to name a few.

Organised by the American Federation of Arts for simultaneous North American and European tours, the exhibition opened in late 1989 at the International Centre for Photography in New York and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It will continue to tour to major American and European galleries throughout 1990-1992. Amongst the prominent galleries it is to be exhibited in are Hayward Gallery, London; StedeIijk, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Zurich: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota.

The curatorial work on the project was carried out by Robert Delpire, Director of the Centre National del la Photographic in Paris, and Fred Ritchin, curator, author and former picture editor for The New York Times.

Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated book published by W. W. Norton with essays by William Manchester, Jean Lacouture, and Fred Ritchin. Manchester's essay deals with an overall history of events of the period, the Lacouture essay is a kind of group portrait of the individual photographers that make up the agency with a particular emphasis on the founders, and the essay by Ritchin will put Magnum into the context of the evolution of photojournalism and reportage. The publication will include a chronology of Magnum, a bibliography of Magnum and individual biographies and bibliographies of the full members.

('In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers', Bulletin, No.79, May/June 1992, p.1)