Product Description

In the tradition of great Magnum books, this publication brings together the work of the finest photographers of our time. Whether covering the latest news or working on commissions or their own personal stories, Magnum photographers have also found time to document a sport that unites us all - football. This uplifting book brings together an array of images by outstanding photographers working across the globe: Henri Cartier-Bresson in Italy, James Nachtwey in Brazil, Steve McCurry in Burma, Martin Parr in Japan, Abbas in Iran, Luc Delahaye in France, and many more. The pictures, taken over fifty years, show that whether played with a tin can on the back streets of Glasgow or with bare feet on a dusty field in Tanzania, football is a game that cuts across all geographic and social divides. Magnum photographers have captured the sport and its fans with affection and humour. Magnum Football is not a book about super-rich professionals. Instead, it uses football to illuminate the human condition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1083188 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 184 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
What Pele once called "the beautiful game" is captured in all its global diversity in Magnum Football, a wonderful collection of nearly 200 photographs of people playing football all over the world. Trawling its archives since its launch in the 1940s, the world-famous Magnum photographic agency realised that many of its great photographers had often incidentally taken stunning photos of ordinary people absorbed in the pursuit of the great game. The result is this beautifully packaged Phaidon book.

Abbas, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Guy Le Querrec, Peter Marlow and James Nachtwey are just some of the great photographers gathered together in the collection. The pictures are wonderful: crippled Italian children playing soccer in the aftermath of the war in 1948, Marilyn Monroe kicking off a game in 1959, naked football in Brazil, blue-haired female Japanese fans all confirm that, as Simon Kuper points out, "the game is the same whether you are playing in the mud of Maharashtra, the Tuileries Gardens in Paris or a refugee camp". Football brings people together, but it's also the perfect photographic medium for capturing that "decisive moment" of the great goal, the extraordinary save, or the dejection of defeat. As these photos reveals, "a photographer is like a playmaker in football, a number 10, who sees angles nobody else does". In Magnum Football, even in a game of two halves, everybody wins. --Jerry Brotton

About the Author
Magnum Photos was founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and Chim Seymour to free its photographers from the magazine values of the time so that they could shoot the work they wanted. Becoming legendary, Magnum has always precariously balanced the values of art and humanitarian journalism, and continues to do so today. Magnum's members and associated photographers include Eve Arnold, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Depardon, Elliott Erwitt, Leonard Freed, Josef Koudelka, Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, James Nachtwey, Martin Parr, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Larry Towell and Ferdinando Scianna. Photographer's Residence Various