[.ca] Magnum Degrees (ISBN 0714843563)

From Amazon.com:
A 1947 lunch meeting of four friends proved to be one of the most auspicious dates in the history of photojournalism. It was around a lunch table that day that Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David Seymour--each recently returned from covering World War II and its aftermath--formed the Magnum photo agency. Since then, Magnum photographers, with their singular knack for capturing history in an instant, have been responsible for creating many of the most iconic images of our world, in both war and peace. Magnum Degrees is a selection of agency photos that illustrates the range of subject matter and imagery the photographers have captured over the last half century. The book, which overflows with photographs and includes only the briefest amount of text, is arranged thematically to effectively highlight the wide scope of images even within a narrow field. In "Middle East," Larry Towell captures boys playing in Gaza, while Micha Bar-Am trains his camera on a Jewish man, wrapped in a prayer shawl, fleeing a smoke bomb in Jerusalem. In "India," in the town of Benares, Ferdinando Scianna snaps photos of an excruciatingly thin man carrying his dead daughter and two nicely dressed young girls frolicking in the water. In "Religion," photographer Abbas trains his lens both on a man reenacting the Crucifixion in the Philippines and a woman being physically moved by the Holy Spirit in a rural Georgia church. As some of the themes--"Refugees," "Child Victims," "In the Camps," "War in Africa"--suggest, many of the images here are powerfully disturbing. Others, particularly those collected under the headings "Trees," "Fishing," and "Architecture," are lyrically beautiful. Still others, like Martin Parr's photographs of tourists on vacation the world over, are witty and comic. Taken together, the thousand or so photos here capture the often surprising, always complex nature of humanity and do justice to the agency founders' original intention to "document the world as it really is." --Jordana Moskowitz

Chronique amazon.fr:
En 1947, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, Robert Capa et George Rodger créent l'agence Magnum, coopérative indépendante, détenue exclusivement par ses photographes. Il s'agit de faire reconnaître le droit d'auteur, d'être propriétaires de ses négatifs. Magnum, forte d'une réputation patrimoniale, rassemble aujourd'hui près de soixante photographes. À travers l'objectif des membres actuels, Magnum prend la température du monde depuis la chute du mur de Berlin en 1989. Ouvrage majeur qui replace des expériences individuelles dans leur contexte local et s'engage dans les soubresauts de l'histoire humaine. La persistance des rituels, témoignage sans fard de ce qui perdure malgré le temps, le chaos, illustré par la guerre, la pollution, les épidémies et la violence politique, jusqu'à l'esthétique du quotidien qui fait la part belle à la photographie de proximité, non événementielle, plutôt anecdotique. Ce sont là des oeuvres en noir et blanc ou en couleurs de James Nachtwey, Josef Koudelka, Abbas, Luc Delahaye, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Martine Franck et... Henri Cartier-Bresson qui livre ses derniers travaux. Voilà le monde tel qu'il est au carrefour du millénaire. La force de Magnum est d'apporter des images qui nous arrêtent dans un monde précisément saturé d'images. Une force qui sait mêler art, information et poésie. --Céline Darner

Degrees of excellence.:
There are plenty of photograph anthologies available, but few of this caliber. Not only is the subject range impressive, the quality of the work is astounding. The section dealing with war provides a harrowing and insightful view into events of recent years, creating a sobering perspective of the late 20th century. An amazing book!

Just BUY IT:
It took me a year to get all the way through it. Each image is independently powerful, enough so that I had to spend a great deal of time studying each diptic (a year in total). If you can judge this book by it's cover, then judge it by one word on it's cover - MAGNUM. You won't be disappointed.

A great album, can be a great Christmas present:
This collection of Magnum photographs is amazing. The pictures are broken into differnet thematic or geographic categories--war, environment, famine, etc. While there is very little text and almost no captions at all, the pictures are enough to speak to the subject. It contains both recent photographs and old ones, becoming something like an encyclopediea of photography. It is a beautiful edition, worth having and will make an excellent, classy present not only for a photography enthusiast, but for everybody.

Beautiful Book!:
Yet another collection of beautiful photographs from the legends of Magnum. Beautifully bound and annotated with text. Includes old and new pics. A must have on every decent bookshelf.