Eve

"If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument."

-Eve Arnold


Eve Arnold on the set of Becket. ©Robert Penn. 1963 © Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos


©Eve Arnold


©Bill Jay


©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos, The Brooklyn Museum
Marilyn Monroe with Arthur Miller in 1960 captured by Eve Arnold.

Eve Arnold wanted to be a writer or a dancer and came to photography by chance, so she toked a 6 week class with Alexei Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research, New York. The year 1948 (the year of graduation), was an important one in her life: while managing a photo-finishing plant she started experimenting with a camera. Using a Rolleicord, Eve completed her first assignment shooting a fashion show in Harlem in a square, black and white format. “It was daunting,” she recalls, “to bring my pale face into that all-black audience and get up enough courage to put my camera into their faces.”

In 1951, Arnold was one of the very few women to join Magnum as an associate. This happened as a result of the fact that Brodovitch found her work fresh and encouraged her to keep on photographing in Harlem. Arnold became a member of Magnum later on in 1955. From then on she worked on numerous reportages for Life, Vogue, Paris Match, Stern and the Sunday Times, traveling in Europe, the US, South America, India and Afghanistan on assignment and working in-depth in the USSR on three successive trips. She became famous for her portraits of celebrities including Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, John Huston, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, the Queen of England, Richard Nixon, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Malcolm X. Her book of memoirs on the 1950′s, published with her own text, explores the growing prominence of media on society.
Eve Arnold Photography
In 1961 she moved to London. At the beginning of the 1970′s Eve photographed the life of veiled women in Egypt, Afghanistan and Abu Dhabi, and then the South African apartheid. In 1979 Eve Arnold traveled to China for another photographic documentary, where she received a National Book Award an year later. After shooting in Britain and the USA Eve has traveled back to Cuba, documenting the descendants of families she had photographed there three decades ago.
Eve Arnold Photography
The most important prizes include:
Kraszna Krausz award for the best book of photography for “In Retrospect”
International Center of Photography’s master photographer award for lifetime achievement.

Books:
The Great British. Photographs by Eve Arnold. New York, 1991 (photo-eye Cat# KN044)
All in a Day’s Work. Photographs by Eve Arnold. New York, 1989 (photo-eye Cat# BA003)
Marilyn Monroe. An Appreciation. Photographs and text by Eve Arnold. New York, 1987 (photo-eye Cat# KN032)
In China. Photographs and text by Eve Arnold. New York, 1980 (photo-eye Cat# KN009)