Our collaborator Jean Loh has a deep friendship and admiration for Ian Berry, one of the last Magnum veterans. So for his 91st birthday, he sent us this:
When the Fedex man rung at my door and handed me a parcel I wondered aloud who’d sent me a belated Christmas present? Here was a book titled “Ian Berry the Quiet Man of Magnum” written by John Cogan a former head teacher and amateur photographer. Ian had told me about the book, so I had asked for a signed copy, I already have two autographed books by Ian, first a vintage edition of his “The English”, then his seminal “WATER” an important “save-the-world” book, that he signed for me right outside the bookstore in Perpignan, when he had his exhibition at the Dominican Church in 2023 during VISA pour l’Image – the unique outstanding festival of photojournalism in the world. Both books are now out of print.
The title “the Quiet Man of Magnum” described perfectly Ian as the low-profile gentleman I have always known, because among the members of the prestigious Magnum Photos agency there was no shortage of “unquiet men”, to begin with, Robert Capa, the co-founder who could talk his way from the Spanish civil war to Omaha Beach and to Hollywood with a sort of multilingual Esperanto of his invention. I first met Ian Berry when he was invited with Bruno Barbey to Shanghai Photo Center SCoP (now closed) for a joint exhibition “Two Magnum Masters of Photography” in May 2016. In the taxi on the way to Scop as the three of us were crammed on the ruined backseat of a Volkswagen Santana made in Shanghai Ian showed me pages of his book “The English”. At that time, I was more interested in curating Ian’s work on China such as his reportage on the Three Gorges, but the occasion never materialized until the Shenzhen Photo-festival, where the organizers wanted only city-themed photography. So Ian and I decided to show “the English” series, which seemed more “exotic” to the Chinese audience, Ian’s documentary on London’s East-End where the White Chapel district started to experience poignant social changes under the first wave of immigration from the West Indies in the 1970s.
Apart from street scenes, Ian Berry was interested in setting social portraits under his empathetic eye, from the Marge-Simpson-like housewife holding her puppy outside a covered market, to the cobbler lighting up outside his shop window displaying high heel rock and roll boots in the David Bowie style, to the actor Ian McKellen (future Gandalf) standing in front of a theater with glaring neon lights spelling “Shakespear Company”, and the painter Francis Bacon in a lively lecture in his chaotic studio. He had also shared intimacy with the Pop Stars Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg in their painted-black Parisian apartment or walking hand in hand crossing the street in London. All these characters seem to come “alive” in his portraits.
At the Perpignan Festival of Photojournalism Ian Berry had lined up his “Water” prints inside the vast nave of the Church des Dominicains. What started out as a book on religious practices in the different countries that Ian Berry had covered turned out to be a wake-up call for the unprecedented water crisis the world has been living through. His most trusted editor and wife Kathie Webber wrote: “Over the course of 15 years, Ian Berry travelled the globe to document the inextricable links between landscape, life and water. This book brings together a selection of the resulting images which collectively tell the story of man’s complex relationship with water — at a time when climate change demonstrates just how precariously water and life are intertwined”.
In those days inside and outside Magnum the sense of competition was fierce, when in 1968, Ian got a call asking him if he was willing to go to Prague, above all he heard that Don McCullin was on his way: “Everybody knew something was going to happen. I had asked for a visa but nothing happened and my visa expired. I had a call from the then bureau chief in Paris to say that the Russians were moving into Czechoslovakia, and did I want to go? He said Don McCullin was already on his way, and that was like a red rag to a bull for me, so I said, “I’m on my way!” – and he managed to cross the German-Czech border pretending to be a British delegate going to a conference on architecture. Little did he know that a local unknown photographer was already on the ground and running, as the Russian tanks started barricading streets, Ian photographed young Czech people listening to their portable radio about the progression of the Soviet invasion. He could not have overlooked the “lunatic” on Wenceslas Square, “an absolute maniac who clambered on a tank carrying a couple of old-fashioned cameras on a string around his neck.” He said in his interview with John Cogan. That lunatic was Josef Koudelka who later joined Magnum in 1974, twelve years after Ian Berry. Both men had contributed major documentary that left their marks on the historical chapter of the Prague Spring. But when I asked Ian if he and Josef Koudelka have ever shown each other their Prague photos, I was surprised to hear that actually they had never approached that subject! Ian told me: “he’s a funny guy, and I love his honest photography, it’s about time that I show him my Prague photos next time.”
That’s the way Ian Berry has stayed “quiet” about his Photography.
Jean Loh
“Water” by Ian Berry / Published by Gost Book 25 May 2023
Essay by Kathie Webber
180pp, 93 images
ISBN 978-1-910401-92-7 / out of print
“Ian Berry the Quiet Man of Magnum” by John Cogan
Published 30/08/2024 by Allies Group Ltd; Limited Signed Edition
Paperback 184 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1399990851
