Magnum Foundation has released Inge Morath: An Illustrated Biography, the third volume in the Magnum Legacy Series. “Little has been published about how the personal experiences of Magnum photographers shaped their commitment to telling stories,” writes Kristen Lubben, Executive Director, Magnum Foundation, in the press release. She adds, “This series invites us to imagine their world on the other side of the lens.”

Inge Morath: An Illustrated Biography by Linda Gordon (Prestel, November 2018) is the first ever full-length biography of Austrian-born American photographer Inge Morath. After overcoming an adolescence in Nazi Germany and the trauma of barely surviving World War II, Morath used her camera as a way to enter worlds closed to most women. One of the first women to join Magnum Photos in 1953, she worked closely with Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In the book, Gordon traces Morath as she “traveled across the globe, often as a woman alone, quietly but firmly defying the conventions for what was appropriate for women at the time,” states the press release. “Her photographs show her cosmopolitanism, her love of literature, and her fluency in many languages.” Unified by an intimacy and comfort with her subjects, Morath’s work reveals her respect for the various cultures she documented. She had a rare ability to see, simultaneously, the universal and the personal.

Inge Morath: An Illustrated Biography
Magnum Foundation Legacy Series
Published by Prestel (November 2018)

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