Click on a panel title below to view recordings of this event.

From Henri Cartier-Bresson’s creative partnership with the publisher Robert Delpire, to Alec Soth’s experimental publishing house Little Brown Mushroom, the photobook as a means of expressing a body of work has been a critical preoccupation of Magnum’s membership since the agency’s inception in 1947.

As part of Magnum’s 70th anniversary celebration and in conjunction with the ICP Museum exhibition Magnum Manifesto, join us for an exploration of photobooks with Martin Parr, Fred Ritchin, Susan Meiselas, and other Magnum photographers, critics, and publishers in this special one-day symposium.

Panels will cover the history and future of photobooks, the photobook in relation to social and political conflict, and the trend of personal narratives invigorating the form. The day will conclude with a book signing featuring a variety of top photobook sellers from 5:15–6 PM.

Tickets are $35 for general admission and $25 for ICP Members. A limited number of free tickets are available to ICP School Full-Time Program students by emailing Nicole Garvin, ngarvin@icp.edu.

Panel Discussions

• The Magnum Founders' First Books: moderated by Kristen Lubben, with Inge Bondi, Jinx Rodger, and Cynthia Young.
• Photobooks on Social and Political Conflict: moderated by Fred Ritchin, with Bruce Davidson, Susan Meiselas, and Larry Towell.
• Personal Narratives: moderated by Carole Naggar, with Michael Christopher Brown, Bieke Depoorter, and Sohrab Hura.
• The Future of Photobooks: moderated by Martin Parr, with Olivia Arthur, Lesley Martin, and Alec Soth.

Bios

Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer who lives and works in New York. She is the author of Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Pandora’s Box (2001), and Encounters with the Dani (2003). She has co-edited two published collections: El Salvador, Work of 30 Photographers (1983) and Chile from Within (1990), re-released as an e-book in 2013, and also co-directed two films: Living at Risk (1985) and Pictures from a Revolution (1991) with Richard P. Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti. Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and most recently was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015).

Fred Ritchin is Dean of the ICP School, which serves more than 3,500 students each year in graduate, certificate, continuing education, and youth photography programs. Previously Ritchin had founded the Documentary Photography and Visual Journalism Program at the ICP School and directed it from 1983–86. He was appointed Dean in 2014.

Prior to joining ICP, Fred Ritchin was professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and co-director of the NYU/Magnum Foundation Photography and Human Rights educational program. Previously the picture editor of the New York Times Magazine, executive editor of Camera Arts magazine, and founding director of PixelPress, Ritchin has written and lectured internationally about the challenges and possibilities implicit in the digital revolution. His books include In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (Aperture, 1990), After Photography (WW Norton , 2008), and Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen (Aperture, 2013).

Martin Parr is one of the best-known documentary photographers of his generation. With over 90 books of his own published, and another 30 edited by Parr, his photographic legacy is already established. He has curated two photography festivals, Arles in 2004 and Brighton Biennial in 2010. More recently Parr curated the Barbican exhibition, Strange and Familiar. Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1994 and currently serves as president of the agency. In 2013 Parr was appointed visiting professor of photography at the University of Ulster. Parr’s work has been collected by many of the major museums, including the Tate, the Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.