In Memory of Eve Arnold

Marilyn Monroe, Malcolm X, Paul Newman and Queen Elizabeth II were just some of the characters who appeared in front of Eve Arnold's lens. She passed away peacefully this week, three months before her 100th birthday. As well as being a prolific, instinctive photographer, capturing unique moments of those in celebrity, royalty and political spheres and documenting the post-war landscapes, Arnold was the first woman to join the prestigious Magnum Photos agency. "It was a big plus to be a woman working in those days. Men liked to be photographed by women", she once said. "I do think that women think differently and have something to offer that men don't have."

Arnold was born to Russian-Jewish parents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with the intention of either pursuing a career in medicine or as a dancer. But the gift of a Rolleiflex camera during the Second World War sparked an interest in photography and, in 1946, she began work at a photo-finishing plant in New Jersey. In 1948 she enrolled at the New School for Social Research in New York and was taught by the art director of Harper's Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, with Richard Avedon as her classmate. She was later encouraged by her husband to send a collection of her prints to Picture Post in London, and their publication in 1951 launched her career which spanned nearly half a century.

Arnold was perhaps best-known for her longstanding collaboration and subsequent friendship with Marilyn Monroe, which has resulted in a vast, intimate collection of portraits of the ill-fated Hollywood starlet taken over a 10-year period. "Marilyn knew more intuitively about photography than anyone, because what you saw was what she wanted to show you", Arnold said in 1997. "But it was always more than anyone else would show you."

"But the true appeal of Arnold's output is the balance between candid shots of the rich and famous and her sharp, considered observations of the lesser known"

But the true appeal of Arnold's output is the balance between candid shots of the rich and famous and her sharp, considered observations of the lesser known. She was always vocal in her wish to be remembered as more than a celebrity photographer. A sharp critic of McCarthyism, apartheid, poverty and social injustice, she lived with hippy communes and the Black Power movement. As a photojournalist, she travelled the world – she was one of the first to be granted a visa after America and China established diplomatic relations and photographed migrant labourers, New York bartenders, Cuban fishermen and Afghan nomads. She said: "It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is." A a self-professed workaholic, Arnold often developed her themes so extensively that they merited full-length books, and occasionally developed her work into films and picture stories.

Eve Arnold, Hon. FRPS, OBE passed away in a London nursing home on January 4, 2012. Later this month, TeNeues will release All About Eve, a 216-page retrospective of her work.

Text by Laura Bradley