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Magnum Cinema

Magnum Cinema was originated in the mid-1990s and has toured in various forms to over 60 venues worldwide with an audience of over 1 million visitors. Consisting of 124 photographs, this exhibition spans over 50 years featuring portraits on-set of film icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman and James Dean, as well as shots taken behind the scenes of multiple films.

Collectively Magnum’s archive of film imagery, the product of working on film sets capturing behind-the-scenes moments and photographing film directors, actors and actresses on and off camera, includes a large part of the history of cinema. The 1950s, a period when the cult of the cinema idol grew, coincided with Magnum’s own ‘Golden Age’ – a time before television was widely available and the picture magazines reigned supreme as the main disseminators of news and publicity. Individual Magnum photographers forged friendships with movie stars, getting the kind of unchecked access no longer conceivable to today’s celebrities.

Magnum’s longstanding engagement with film can be traced back to the agency’s founding members. Henri Cartier-Bresson directed a number of films and Robert Capa’s extensive network of contacts included actors and directors amongst its ranks. Perhaps most fruitful in terms of images was Capa’s long-term friendship with the American Film Director, John Houston. In 1961, ten Magnum photographers were given the exclusive rights to document the making of his seminal movie, The Misfits. Written by the American playwright, Arthur Miller, it featured a cast of Hollywood stars including Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. The film became legendary as it was the last that Monroe and Gable ever made.

Despite the huge changes in photography since photojournalism’s mid-Twentieth Century heyday, “storytelling” is still a term used to define Magnum’s approach to documenting the world. The art of telling a story using words, sounds and pictures is as applicable, if not more so, to film as photography, so it is little wonder that Magnum’s photographers continue to have an ongoing and diverse relationship with the moving as well as still image. This exhibition provides an introduction both to Magnum and cinema’s heritage.

Signed fine photographs of a selection of images from the exhibition will be available to purchase.

Jumeirah Group and Magnum Photos present Magnum Cinema, an exhibition of cinema themed images from the famous Magnum archive, held at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers to coincide with Art Dubai.