Magnum Streetwise

told me about the history of magnum . A must if you are interested in street photography

damn this book is more than i expected. i love the grit of streets, this book covers generations of life captured... also has info blurbs... and i’m not too scared i’ll break the spine by looking through...

A beautiful compendium of the masters of street photography. This is a comprehensive volume, containing bios and styles of every photographer profiled. It's heavy on photos as well, giving the reader a solid reference library of work.Highly recommend!

Great catalog of Magnum Street but also a fantastic job of editing in how it is compiled. Much more than just a "picture" book, lots of added extra material.

I purchased this for my daughter who loves photography and our family became engrossed in the book. Stunning photos and interesting looks at various cities and people. Might need to get another!

The front cover calls this "The Ultimate Collection of Street Photography" which it most certainly is NOT. While Magnum had (and has) many top talents in the genre, many others like Frank, Klein and Winogrand were not members and are therefore not included.However, this book is not even the best of Magnum--much less from ALL of street photography.Instead, it's a seemingly-random dip into Magnum's files with a handful of images from established names like Cartier-Bresson, Parr and Gilden alongside newer talent. But this "ultimate collection" leaves out many better-known photographs from the masters.Magnum members are given brief chatty profiles followed by a few sample images. There are also photo essays clustered around photographing New York, Paris, London and Tokyo, and themes of In Transit, Days Off and Playing the Markets. Some of this isn't "street photography" but illustration for news stories.There's nothing heavy or detailed, and hardly a mention of technique or equipment. It almost seems to be a coffee-table book intended for casual browsing, and on that basis perhaps it deserves another star.There is interesting work by some younger Magnum members, but nothing close to an "ultimate collection" and judged by that standard, it's a disappointment.

I very much value the agency's work. This collection is an edition of "also ran" street images. The presentation is inelegant. Volume is supposed to compensate for quality (?).

This is not the best of Magnum. I’ve seen really great photos of Magnum photographers and was disappointed in this collection. It is a hodgepodge of random mediocre works of great photographers (I’ve seen their better works). Worse, the copy sent to me was damaged!

My groanworthy title doesn't do this book justice. It really is an interesting book even if many of the pictures aren't technically fantastic. I make that judgement not because I'm especially good at street photography although it is a passion of mine, but because I've seen over the years a great deal of street photography done by big names and unknowns alike, and so much of the best in the genre comes down to setting, era, people, quirks, and only finally awesome technical skills!The settings in here are almost always interesting, and sometimes photographed with genuine "everyday drama" in the lighting or the way the shots are composed. The best street photos convey a heightened reality in which the guru photographer's reading of the moment always makes the decisive difference. Sometimes that reality is drama, sometimes bleakness or a sense of disconnection, sometimes just strangeness, but the better street photographers always seem to have that knack for seeing the moment just before it arrives. I was always a bit surprised that Tony Ray-Jones never made it into Magnum's hallowed halls, this book would have been the better for a few of his images and notes!But the big and best names are all here, with enough text to give a small taste of the photographer and his works, at least, those included in the book. It is organised by photographer and after a half page or so of introduction, we get into their images and indeed that's what the majority of the book is, images at a decent size that are often extremely immersive even if often they're monochrome and filled with people all living in their era. I think this is what works about this book, at lest as I see it. The mono images reduce everything to line and form, light and shade in composition and no distracting colours for the most part, and the settings from a past time - even if only recently past - are fantastic mainly because they are gone and won't return exactly in the same way. It's a book of lost moments salvaged by the camera. Colour images also have their part here, colour lending them a familiarity that adds and takes away dimensions of the shots.There are quite a few photos in here that at this moment do nothing for me, but the majority are worth coming back to time and again. In a few months time a different subset will leave me cold, and something new will be seen in a picture I overlooked.In this age where everybody has a camera and the opportunity to take a great photo even without the ability there are probably a far larger number of truly great street images out there to be seen. A million monkeys at typewriters will sometimes accidentally make a compelling sentence, worthy of quoting (maybe one will be me, someday). So while this is Magnum's space specifically, it will always be worth supplementing it with other books.Still a great book that I can return to and see something new.

This does not live up to its title. It's not remotely "the ultimate collection of street photography". It is a fairly interesting, if somewhat random, collection of photos by Magnum agency photographers shoehorned together in a wide ranging discussion of how just about any candid photograph of people might be considered "street". With a couple of fine exceptions the real street masters are not represented, as it is only the Magnum agency photographers who are included. So it includes news photographs, social documentary and other genres along with street photos. The edition is too narrow for its thickness so doesn't open well. On the plus side, there are some great photos and photographers in the book, it's just a bit disappointing.

I really enjoy street photography and overall this is a nicely produced book, particularly when it comes to the text about each photographer. However, many of the pix are quite poor as images in their own right. A good street photo in my mind should be able to create it's own story yet many of the images would appear to work only if accompanied by explanatory text such as in a newspaper story. And many were probably used in that way. However, if you need to know about the story to bring the pic alive the photo has failed as a street photograph in my view. And therefore many of the book's images fail as street photographs or are inappropriate. They may work as part of a newspaper package but fail otherwise.

Calling this the 'Ultimate Collection' was a mistake. It's a great collection, sure, but not the ultimate collection (an impossble task, surely?). Aside from that, this book is a bargain for its £20 price tag with a tonne of Magnum photos by everyone from Abbas to Alex Webb, alongside some succinct and useful introductory texts. Personally, I was delighted to discover that Sergio Larrain had been included, as well as Trent Parke and Guerogui Pinkhassov. On the other hand, there are far too few Magnum women.I'm a street photographer and if I'd been able to wait until Xmas, I would have been delighted to find this lively book in my stocking (and not being outsize, it would probably fit).

Unfortunately the front cover was badly dented and one of the pages badly cut leaving a flap hanging out of the side of the book. Packaging was undamaged so the book must have been damaged beforehand. Disappointing as it is not a cheap item.