After Turin, the major exhibition on Eve Arnold comes to Forli.

From September 23, 2023 to January 7, 2024, the Museo Civico San Domenico in Forlì hosts the exhibition Eve Arnold. The Work, 1950-1980, curated by Monica Poggi, promoted by the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì with the Municipality of Forlì in collaboration with CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia di Torino, and realized in agreement with Magnum Photos. An extensive exhibition with 170 photographs that intends to offer a journey within the production of American photographer Eve Arnold, the first woman, together with Inge Morath, to join the prestigious Magnum Photos agency in 1951.

The African-American community was the first protagonist of her shots: in fact, Eve Arnold inaugurated her career by portraying models at Harlem fashion shows backstage, subverting the canons of fashion photography, abandoning posing in favor of spontaneity and giving dignity to a submerged world. During the same period, he worked on a reportage on the Davis family residing on Long Island. Considered a “typical” American family, descended from early settlers, the Davises own several pieces of land where they exploit black laborers: an opportunity for Arnold to show the two sides of the economic boom of the 1950s and to show the world the price paid by the last in the name of business.

Fragility, starting with her own, is also at the center of a work that allows her to traverse the pain of losing a child by translating into images what has been lost. She immortalizes the first moments of dozens of newborns at Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson, once again managing to capture the purest essence of what lies before her.

After joining Magnum, the photographer begins to come into contact with the world of entertainment. As her first assignment she has to portray Marlene Dietrich, the diva par excellence of silent films, during the recording of her album. He is unfazed by the specific weight of that notoriety and begins to photograph her relentlessly, capturing the truer nature of that already so iconic image. In spite of Dietrich’s many directions during post-production, Eve Arnold decided to reprint the photos better and send them to Esquire-a courageous gesture that unhinged the German superstar’s intangible image, but also won her trust and appreciation.

And it is precisely to this philosophy that he draws when he has to portray Joan Crawford during the countless aesthetic “rituals” before entering the set, relying on his instinct and his voracious and acute gaze and thus coming to show the most intimate and authentic side of a myth.

At the pinnacle of his Hollywood-related output, however, is Marilyn Monroe. Portraits far from the imagery already linked to the diva, decomposed, made after long days on set, no longer unattainable.

Also thanks to Magnum, international assignments began, which made her return to a more committed photography: in 1969 she took on the reportage “Beyond the Veil” between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, a project that would lead her to produce a documentary, the first to show the inside of a Dubai harem.

In 1979, on the other hand, Arnold would travel to China to document the country’s change after Deng Xiaoping took office, increasingly open to the West and determined to bring out what was otherwise concealed.

“At the center of Eve Arnold’s work,” points out curator Monica Poggi, “is always the human being and why he is where he is. Whether her subjects are world-acclaimed celebrities or migrants dressed in rags, it changes little.”

Image: Eve Arnold, Marilyn Monroe in the Nevada desert during the filming of The Misfits (USA, 1960) © Eve Arnold / Magnum Photo

After Turin, the major exhibition on Eve Arnold comes to Forli.

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