Magnum’s David Hurn is one of Britain’s most influential documentary photographers, his work characterised by a quiet observation and singular insight. Over a sixty-year career Hurn’s natural inclination has always been less towards hard news stories and more ordinary people in their everyday lives, from Beatles fans to the Hungarian Revolution.
In 1979-80 Hurn was awarded a UK/USA Bicentennial Fellowship, a one-year award to photograph in America. With the whole country to choose from, he opted for Arizona.
“It was the most right-wing state in America and Wales at that time was probably the most left-wingpart of the UK. Also it’s the driest state in America and Wales is the wettest. So it seemed to me it was such an extraordinary contrast.”
Hurn returned to Arizona several times between 1979 and 2001 to capture ordinary people in ordinary pursuits. From cheerleading to wild horse wrangling, Dolly Parton look-alike competitions, fraternity dances, arm-wrestling contests and ladies only clubs with nearly-nude male dancers, Arizona Trips is the first book dedicated to Hurn’s twenty-year love affair with Arizona.
Released to coincide with Magnum Photo’s 70th birthday, Arizona Trips includes an accompanying interview with cultural historian Christopher Frayling. In conversation, Frayling refers to the self-taught Hurn as a ‘visual essayist’.
“Life as it unfolds in front of the camera is full of so much complexity, wonder and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities, there is more pleasure, for me, in things as they are.”
ISBN: 978-1-909526-51-8;
160pp; hardback; 150+ black and white photographs
275 x 230mm / 10.75 x 9 in.
Available to Pre-Order Now
Released November 2017
Information
Reel Art Press
4 Mansfield Mews London W1G 9NL UK
November 28, 2017 to December 28, 2017
