Magnum Contact Sheets
31 May
If you follow this blog at all (and I mean that loosely, it could be once every few months).. you might be sick of me going on about looking through the contact sheets as a wee Magnum intern many moons ago.
Still.. it was pretty fucking amazing to see. Not only that yes, my favorite photographers took crappy pictures, too, but the editing process; the grease pencil marks, the decisions that were made so that now we remember that one image instead of the one next to it. I believe seeing those markings, seeing how many shots it could take to get to the one, recognizing how objective an edit is, got me into being a photo editor in the first place. If you are only seeing one image from a shoot, it better be good.
I received Magnum Contact Sheets as a gift over six months ago and I have been too distracted by it to mention it here. Edited by Kristen Lubben (dream job) its fantastic. A few of my favorite pages, including of course the extreme close-ups of the brave Joan Crawford shot by Eve Arnold..
I remember you yelling about these contact sheets. Immense jealousy wells in my soul when you speak of them and that amazing book.
Thanks for the memories of interning at Magnum. Thumbing through all those contact filled binders was truly an amazing experience, and one I will never forget. I will have to check this book out and see if the experience is anything close.
Thanks, Jeremy! Weren’t those binders incredible? Its not the same but its as good as it will get I guess..