Magnum Degrees - Introduction

Someone bought me a Magnum book for my birthday -  Magnum Degrees. The book includes photographs from across the members of Magnum at the point at which the agency reached 50 years of age. The photographs give a view of the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current time (2003 at the point of publication). The introduction is by Michael Ignatieff and there were a number of things raised in it which struck a chord with me. I'm going to quote directly:

"To document is to subvert since reality is the least obvious thing there is. To approach it one has to strip away the clichés that keep it hidden from our sight."

"We always think photography tells us more than it does. We always think we understand more than we do when we look at a photograph. The reality is that we do not know the people in the photographs: the photographers themselves often do not even know the names of the people whose suffering or elation of terror they are recording."

"Magnums photographers are sometimes criticised for 'aestheticizing' violence, for making killing seem beautiful. But that is surely their job: to make terror beautiful so that it will be unforgettable; so that it will burn into peoples memories; so they will do something to stop it, if they can."

"Television seems to tell us everything we need to know. It drains reality of mystery by suggesting that what we see is all there is. Good photography restores the mystery of the world by stopping time so that we can both see and reflect upon what is there. Hence the unending strangeness of photography; that it both documents the world, establishes what is essentially there, while at the same time showing to us what we cannot see with our eyes alone, so if photography has a redeeming or cleansing effect on our vision, it is because it seems to restore both the reality of the world and its essential elusiveness."

"So now there might be a few magnum photographers who would lay claim to the ideal if trying to show that human beings are the same underneath the skin. The successors - represented in this book - seem intent chiefly to represent the modern world in all its fragmented, perplexed confusion. The world is in pieces; there are no cold-war mastodons left to oppose; no liberal or any other certainties to align oneself with; so be it, these image-makers seem to be saying. Let us go out and see the world. These photographers do not want to affirm, just look; do not want to speak out, just observe; do not want to convince or persuade, just show. The purpose of photography is not political of moral or anything else; the purpose of photography is photography. End of story."