Magnum Contact Sheets offers insight into the socio-political context of the photos and the general history of photojournalism as well as the working methods of the world’s most famed journalistic photographers, by looking at their original contact sheets.
The exhibition consists of more than 100 contact sheets and offers a chronological overview of outstanding historical moments from the 1930s to 2010. Work can be seen by renowned photographers such as Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David ‘Chim’ Seymour, Werner Bischof, George Rodger, Elliott Erwitt, Martin Parr, Jim Goldberg, Trent Parke, Paolo Pellegrin and Alec Soth. In Contact Sheets, the legendary agency Magnum (established in 1947) shows for the first time the circumstances in which images by these photographers were created. Not only the moments before and after taking that one iconic photo are on show, but also the photographer’s notes, marking that decisive moment on the sheet, often long after the photo was shot.