Eve Arnold

Over the past few weeks I've been reading about the life and career of Eve Arnold. She has written her own story. Having kept notes and writings during the time while she was shooting then going back and adding in what she remembers in retrospect. It seems she finds new points that now stand out more than her initial notes in the light of her personal history and public history.

Eve Arnold worked alongside Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt in her time. She said she chose to do things her own way because people expected women to be different from men. She said that being one of the first women in the photographers cooperative Magnum, there was an opportunity for her to be different because the mindset was that she couldn't be anything but different from the other photographers, since they were all men.

As her career began she started initiating, creating, and following to completion her own photo assignment ideas. This gave her control over not only subject matter, but artistic direction and approach to the storyline as well. She had the ability to put more of her own voice into each of her independant assignments. Therefore her photographs were telling the story she intended as opposed to the slant an editor or unpredicted writer would spin.

Eve Arnold