Magnum's First

Magnum Photos, founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Georges Rodger, David "Chim" Seymour and Bill Vandivert, is one of the most famous photography agencies in the world. Until recently, an exhibition curated by L. Fritz Gruber for the 1956 Photokina in Cologne was considered the earliest Magnum group show. However, more than 50 years later, an even earlier exhibition has been rediscovered.

This volume features a total of 83 vintage prints by eight Magnum photographers--Werner Bischof, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Ernst Haas, Erich Lessing, Jean Marquis, Inge Morath, and Marc Riboud--in large-format reproductions, around the theme of "photographic humanism" people and their everyday surroundings, photographed unsensationally by committed photojournalists who believed in educating and bettering the world through their work.