Magnum Sport exhibition hailed as a success by partners

Magnum Sport was premiered in Birmingham, to coincide with London 2012 the Olympics and Paralympic Games, bringing the work of 40 internationally acclaimed photographers from the celebrated photography agency, Magnum Photos, to audiences on the streets of Birmingham.  The exhibition was specifically curated and designed for display in two public realm locations in Colmore Business District. 

The exhibition built on the successful partnership projects developed and presented by Colmore Business District and the Library of Birmingham bringing together public and private sector organisations to deliver exceptional photography exhibitions and projects.  We are delighted with the outstanding feedback and results and look forward to our next collaboration together. 

The main outcomes were as follows:

-  Images by the world’s leading photographers were exhibited in Birmingham in the public realm including works by:  Eve Arnold, Werner Bischof, Robert Capa, Martine Frank, Harry Gruyaert, Thomas Hoepker, Susan Meiselas, David Seymour, Martin Parr, George Roger, W Eugene Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins and Alex Webb, featured in the exhibition. 

-  The exhibition carried a strong message; sport as a universal language, sport for all with no borders; sport as an activity which bridges social, religious, cultural and genders divides; sport as part of, not separate from everyday life. 

-  The exhibition celebrated and commemorated an extraordinary summer of sport; London 2012 the Olympics and Paralympics in an ambitious and engaging way.

-  There is interest in the exhibition touring to other UK cities.

-  The media coverage created was local and national and including national newspaper coverage and regional TV.  This media coverage had an Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) in excess of £61,198.49 reaching over 1,766,364 readers.

-  Total attendance figures for the exhibitions was in excess of 873,750 people.

Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday - Evening Reception

On Thursday 9th August, a number of VIP guests were invited to attend the official launch event for Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday. The event, which was kindly hosted by sponsors Squire Sanders, saw 80 delegates from an array of businesses and organisations and from across sectors attend the launch to find out more about the stunning exhibition and why cities should host similar exhibitions in order to engage the general public with art, and in particular photography. 

The event was hailed a great success, with speeches from Councillor Ian Ward, Deputy Leader for Birmingham City Council, Rob Valentine, board member for Colmore Business District, Fiona Rogers from Magnum Photos and Nathan Tromans from Birmingham City University.

A huge thank you to all that attended and made the evening and the exhibition such a success.

You can view photos from the evening by clicking the link below

Featured Photographer: Alex Webb

This weeks photographer of the week is Alex Webb. Alex has been an associate member of Magnum photos for nearly 40 years, and has photographed people and places all over the world.

Alex Webb became interested in photography during his high school years and attended the Apeiron Workshops in New York, in 1972. He majored in history and literature at Harvard University, at the same time studying photography at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. In 1974 he began working as a professional photojournalist, joining Magnum Photos as an associate member in 1976.

During the mid-1970s Alex photographed in the American south, documenting small-town life in black and white. He also began working in the Caribbean and Mexico. In 1978 he started to photograph in colour, as he has continued to do. He has published seven photography books, including Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds: Photographs from the Tropics, Under A Grudging Sun, Crossings, the limited edition artist book Dislocations and Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names.

Alex received a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in 1986, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. His awards include the Leopold Godowsky Colour Photography Award in 1988, the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000 and the David Octavius Hill Award in 2002. Alex’s photographs have been the subject of articles in Art in America and Modern Photography, and he has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, in museums including the Museum of Photographic Arts, the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Featured Photographer: Martine Franck

Born in Belgium, Martine Franck grew up in the United States and in England. She studied art history at the University of Madrid and at the École du Louvre in Paris.

After joining the Vu Photo Agency, she contributed to the founding of the Viva agency in 1972, taking many portraits of artists and writers, including a noteworthy series of women for Vogue. She undertook more far-reaching work for the French Ministry of Women’s Rights in 1983. That same year she became a full member of Magnum Photos.

Since 1985 Martine has collaborated with the International Federation of Little Brothers of the Poor, a non-governmental organization which cares for the elderly and outcasts of society. It was in 1993 that she first visited the island of Tory, off the northwest coast of Ireland. There she studied the daily life of a traditional Gaelic-speaking community separated from the mainland.

In 2003 and 2004 Martine undertook a theatre project in which she shadowed the avant-garde stage director Robert Wilson at the Comédie Française, documenting his innovative rendition of La Fontaine’s Fables.

Since 2004 Martine has been photographing mainly in Georgia Magnum group project, India , Magnum group project and Japan and has been working on her forthcoming book on artists in their studios in Paris.

Martine has one piece within the Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday exhibition.  

Magnum Sport Photography Exhibition Launches in Birmingham

We’re excited to announce that the Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday exhibition is now officially open. 70 images from 40 of the world’s most renowned photographers can be found throughout the streets of Birmingham surrounding Colmore Square and Church Street Square. Click here to see a map of all the locations.

The exhibition will run until 9^th September so you have plenty of time to see this amazing exhibition.

Featured Photographer: Thomas Hoepker

Thomas Hoepker studied art history and archeology, then worked as a photographer for Münchner Illustrierte and Kristall between 1960 and 1963, reporting from all over the world. He joined Stern magazine as a photo-reporter in 1964.

Magnum Photos began to distribute Hoepker’s archive photographs in 1964. He worked as cameraman and producer of documentary films for German television in 1972, and from 1974 collaborated with his wife, the journalist Eva Windmoeller, first in East Germany and then in New York, where they moved to work as correspondents for Stern in 1976. From 1978 to 1981 Hoepker was director of photography for the American edition of Geo.

Hoepker worked as art director for Stern in Hamburg between 1987 and 1989, when he became a full member of Magnum. Specializing in reportage and stylish color features, he received the prestigious Kulturpreis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in 1968. Among many other awards for his work, he received one in 1999 from the German Ministry of Foreign Aid for Death in a Cornfield, a TV film on Guatemala. Today Hoepker lives in New York. He shoots and produces TV documentaries together with his second wife Christine Kruchen. He was president of Magnum Photos from 2003 to 2006. A retrospective exhibition, showing 230 images from fifty years of work, toured Germany and other parts of Europe in 2007.

Hoepker has 2 pieces of work being exhibited within Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday including the iconic photo of boxing world heavy weight champion, Muhammad Ali.

Brian Griffin: Inspired by Art

Friday 13 July, 1-2pm

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 

Brian Griffin will lead a short walking tour to discuss some of the key paintings
which have inspired his photography.

Part of the Road to 2012 National Portrait Gallery Touring Exhibition

Magnum Sport: Icons and the Everyday

For the sports photographer the sport and its participants are the focus of the photography; in many cases the heroes of the subject matter. With the growing cult of sport personalities, it’s photography is increasingly about the individual. For the Magnum photographer sport is part of, not separate from life. It is what ordinary, as well as extraordinary people, do, well or badly. The photographer’s broader concern is the human condition. In documenting life they also, necessarily, document sport, but often in a vernacular, casual and humorous manner, coming at sport at an unusual tangent.

A Magnum photographer covering sport is more likely to consider the project as a story: who takes part, how it impacts the community, what goes on behind the scenes? Those it entertains being as important as those who take part. Sport is varied and complex and as such can be approached from many directions. Inevitably, with this perspective, sport has been a part of Magnum’s visual archive from the early days of the agency. Robert Capa’s crowd photographs from the 1939 Tour de France, George Rodger’s Nuba Wrestlers and Werner Bischof’s Japanese Sumo wrestlers, to the modern photographs of a very English bowls game by Martin Parr and iconic sports personality Lance Armstrong portrayed by Christopher Anderson in 2004. With the 2012 London Olympics, Magnum photographers will once again be engaged in the social commentary that can develop from aspects of sport photography.