Gamma, a story of photographers, the story of an agency, one of the best. An Éditions de la Martinère book (Gamma : Une histoire de photographes) is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is astounding. The texts by Hubert Henrotte and Floris de Bonneville are sumptuous. Each week, The Eye of Photography publishes some of the images from what was the golden era of photojournalism.
Founded in 1966, by photographers, for photographers, this new agency was to become a world leader within a few months. “Six new photographers, six new views of the world,” was Gamma’s slogan. From its creation, Gamma knew to develop and highlight photojournalism to be informative, to anticipate the news by bringing a personal view to the events. 300,000 black and white contact sheets and 200,000 color selections produced by 5,000 photographers were made over five decades. A real journalistic richness of which this book is the quintessence. It presents the work of those who really created, constructed, and developed the agency, a company often copied but never matched.
All of Gamma’s major photos are in this book. Just like the major photographers who contributed to its history. Today, The Eye of Photography is publishing a selection of Eric Bouvet’s best photographs. Eric Bouvet joined Gamma in 1981 and began working in the black and white lab. He is the one who developed the films about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, sent by Alain Mingam. In 1983, he joined the staff of photographers and covered many conflicts: Afghanistan, Iran-Iraq, Chechnya… In 1989, he jumped from one plane to another: massacre of Tiananmen Square, dismantling of the Hungarian iron curtain, The fall of the Berlin Wall, velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia… Eric Bouvet left the agency in 1990. “In ten years, I learned everything,” he said. His photographs are still distributed by the agency.
Gamma, Une histoire de photographes
Publié par La Martinière
59 euros
