Eve Arnold Tribute

12th Jan 2012

0 comments

WPO Logo

Eve Arnold the world-renowned photojournalist sadly passed away on the 4th January 2012. The magnum member and OBE who was awarded a lifetime achievement award from WPO at Cannes in 2010, was said to be one of the first female pioneers of photojournalism.

She was born in April 1912, in Pennsylvania where she grew up in poverty. She was however well educated and began to follow medicine as her first career choice. While studying she became a keen amateur photographer. It was during the Second World War when she ran America’s first automated film processing plant at Hoboken in New Jersey that she first thought of role of photography as a document of everyday life.

She undertook a photographic course at the New School for Social Research in New York where she studied under the supervision of Alexey Brodovitch, the celebrated art director of Harper’s Bazaar. It was during a class assignment that Arnold demonstrated the freshness of the untrained eye as she ventured into the depreciated churches of Harlem to photograph black fashion shows. It was this collection of images that kick-started her career when they gained the attention of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who admitted her as the first female photographer of the photographic co-operative Magnum. 

Arnold is best known for her intimate ten year collaboration with Marilyn Monroe for which was acclaimed as one of the most iconic portrait photographers of the 20^th century, her subjects included Jacqueline Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Marlene Dietrich to name but a few.  "She will perhaps be best remembered for her exceptional photographs of people; the famous, politicians, musicians, artists and the unknown," Magnum 2012. 

Arnold was renowned for photographing famous personalities over extended periods of time, building close relationships that fueled the intimacy and intrigue of her work. It was however the ‘long-term reportage stories that drove her curiosity and passion’ say her agency. Arnold was also one of the first westerners to be granted a visa after America and China established diplomatic relations. It was during these two three-month trips that she would document daily life in the much-misunderstood country and continue her career by investigating the true nature of the human condition.

During her long career, Arnold published more than 15 monographs. Later this month, TeNeues will release All About Eve, a 216-page retrospective of her work, including some of her most iconic images, as well as many never-before published images. Her negatives, films and videos are now at Yale University and the Tosca Fund has acquired the vintage prints.

She leaves behind a collection of images that provide an insight into the effects of portraiture upon the portrayal of human condition.