Magnum Cinema Phaidon 1995 — Magnum Photographers on Classic Movie Sets

Description

This is Magnum Photos at its most glamorous and most revealing—Magnum Cinema, a massive, image-heavy celebration of fifty years of movie-making as witnessed by the world’s finest photojournalists. From Sophia Loren framed in a window to Marilyn Monroe caught mid-jump, to on-set stills from Rebel Without a Cause, the book reads like a parallel history of cinema told from just outside the spotlight. Magnum shooters—Capa, Erwitt, Haas, Morath, Davidson, Meiselas, Koudelka, and so many others—bring a human, observational intelligence to sets that are normally anything but candid.

Phaidon’s big-book production is excellent: nearly 400 pages, heavy stock, full-bleed spreads, and the kind of printing that renders both gritty black-and-white and glossy color with equal clarity. What emerges is not just a record of films, but a portrait of craft—the choreography behind the camera, the quiet in-between moments, the odd collisions of artifice and reality that make movie-making what it is.

A really nice copy of a cornerstone cinema/photography title—ideal for collectors, film historians, or anyone who wants Magnum’s eye on Hollywood’s golden (and not-so-golden) eras.