Magnum photographers Olivia Arthur, Matt Black, Carolyn Drake, Moises Saman, Cristina García Rodero, Alex Webb, and Martin Parr have documented transgender identity across the world. Below are their different viewpoints that illuminate the lives of transgender people and LGBTQIA+ activism.
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Olivia Arthur
ABOUT OLIVIA ARTHUR
Olivia Arthur is a London-based photographer who has worked for many years on the East-West cultural divide. Her first book Jeddah Diary was about the lives of young women in Saudi Arabia. Her second book, Stranger, is a journey into Dubai seen through the eyes of the survivor of a shipwreck. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been included in institutional collections in the UK, USA, Germany, and Switzerland. She is co-founder of Fishbar, a publisher and space for photography in London. She is a member of Magnum Photos.
Matt Black
ABOUT MATT BLACK
Matt Black is from California’s Central Valley, a rural, agricultural area in the heart of the state.
Between 2014 and 2020, he traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project American Geography, published by Thames and Hudson in 2021 accompanied by a traveling exhibition that opened at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.
Other works include The Dry Land, about the impact of drought on California’s agricultural communities, and The Monster in the Mountains, about the disappearance of 43 students in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Both these projects, accompanied by short films, were published by The New Yorker.
His work has appeared regularly in the US and international press, including TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Le Monde, and Internazionale. He has been honored three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective, and is the recipient of an exploration grant from the National Geographic Society.
Other honors include the National Press Photographers Association, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the California Arts Council, and World Press Photo. He was nominated to join the Magnum Photos in 2015 and became a full member in 2019.
Between 2014 and 2020, he traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project American Geography, published by Thames and Hudson in 2021 accompanied by a traveling exhibition that opened at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.
Other works include The Dry Land, about the impact of drought on California’s agricultural communities, and The Monster in the Mountains, about the disappearance of 43 students in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Both these projects, accompanied by short films, were published by The New Yorker.
His work has appeared regularly in the US and international press, including TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Le Monde, and Internazionale. He has been honored three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective, and is the recipient of an exploration grant from the National Geographic Society.
Other honors include the National Press Photographers Association, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the California Arts Council, and World Press Photo. He was nominated to join the Magnum Photos in 2015 and became a full member in 2019.
Carolyn Drake
ABOUT carolyn drake
Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them.
Drake was born in California and studied Media/Culture and History in the early 1990s at Brown University. Following her graduation from Brown, in 1994, Drake moved to New York and worked as a interactive designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography.
Between 2007 and 2013, Drake traveled frequently to Central Asia from her base in Istanbul to work on two long term projects. Two Rivers (self-published, 2013) explores the connections between ecology, culture, and political power along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and earned a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. Wild Pigeon (self-published, 2014) is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Uyghurs in western China. This work was presented in a six month solo exhibition at SFMOMA in 2018 and earned the Anamorphosis Book prize. Following this, in Internat (self-published, 2017), Drake worked with young women in an ex Soviet orphanage to create photographs and paintings that point beyond the walls of the institution and its gender expectations. This work was awarded the 2018 HCP fellowship curated by Charlotte Cotton and later exhibited in several festivals in Europe. This project was followed by Knit Club (TBW Books, 2020), which emerged from her collaboration with an enigmatic group of women in Mississippi. Knit Club was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Book of the Year and Lucie Photo Book Awards and exhibited at McEvoy Foundation in San Francisco and at Yancey Richardson Gallery and ICP in New York.
Drake now lives in California and is currently developing self-reflective projects close to home. Her latest work, Isolation Therapy, was exhibited at SFMOMA’s show Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis in 2021 and at Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2022. Her work has also been supported by Peter S Reed Foundation, Lightwork, the Do Good Fund, the Lange Taylor prize, Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, and a Fulbright fellowship. She is a member of Magnum Photos and represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery.
Drake was born in California and studied Media/Culture and History in the early 1990s at Brown University. Following her graduation from Brown, in 1994, Drake moved to New York and worked as a interactive designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography.
Between 2007 and 2013, Drake traveled frequently to Central Asia from her base in Istanbul to work on two long term projects. Two Rivers (self-published, 2013) explores the connections between ecology, culture, and political power along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and earned a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. Wild Pigeon (self-published, 2014) is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Uyghurs in western China. This work was presented in a six month solo exhibition at SFMOMA in 2018 and earned the Anamorphosis Book prize. Following this, in Internat (self-published, 2017), Drake worked with young women in an ex Soviet orphanage to create photographs and paintings that point beyond the walls of the institution and its gender expectations. This work was awarded the 2018 HCP fellowship curated by Charlotte Cotton and later exhibited in several festivals in Europe. This project was followed by Knit Club (TBW Books, 2020), which emerged from her collaboration with an enigmatic group of women in Mississippi. Knit Club was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Book of the Year and Lucie Photo Book Awards and exhibited at McEvoy Foundation in San Francisco and at Yancey Richardson Gallery and ICP in New York.
Drake now lives in California and is currently developing self-reflective projects close to home. Her latest work, Isolation Therapy, was exhibited at SFMOMA’s show Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis in 2021 and at Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2022. Her work has also been supported by Peter S Reed Foundation, Lightwork, the Do Good Fund, the Lange Taylor prize, Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, and a Fulbright fellowship. She is a member of Magnum Photos and represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery.
Moises Saman
ABOUT MOISES SAMAN
Magnum photographer Moises Saman blends traditional conflict photography with a deeply personal point of view. For more than ten years, he has been concerned with the humanitarian impact of war in the Middle East, documenting both the front line of daily suffering and the ‘fleeting moments on the periphery of the more dramatic events.’ Saman was born in Lima, Peru, from a mixed Spanish and Peruvian family. At the age of one, his family relocated to Barcelona, Spain, where Moises spent most of his youth. Saman studied Communications and Sociology in the United States at California State University, graduating in 1998. Over the years Saman’s work has received awards from the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year and the Overseas Press Club and his photographs have been shown in a several exhibitions worldwide. In 2015, he was given the highly regarded Guggenheim Fellowship for his photojournalism project on the Arab Spring.
Cristina García Rodero
ABOUT CRISTINA García RODERO
Cristina García Rodero was born in Puertollano, Spain. She studied painting at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Madrid, before taking up photography. She then qualified as a teacher and worked full-time in education. For the next 16 years, she also dedicated her time to researching and photographing popular and traditional festivities – religious and pagan – principally in Spain but also across Mediterranean Europe. This project culminated in her book España Oculta published in 1989, which won the “Book of the Year Award” at the Arles Festival of Photography. The same year, García Rodero also won the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Foundation Prize.
In recent years, García Rodero has traveled around the world in search of other cultures with particular traditions. Over a period of four years, she went several times to Haiti, where she has documented voodoo rituals, producing a series of expressive portraits and moving scenes flanked by engaging documentary observations. Rituals in Haiti was shown for the first time in the 2001 Venice Biennale.
Cristina García Rodero has received many prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Fotografía in 1996 in Spain. Her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally. She has published several books and has been a member of the agency Vu for more than 15 years. Garcia Rodero joined Magnum in 2005 and became a full member in 2009.
In recent years, García Rodero has traveled around the world in search of other cultures with particular traditions. Over a period of four years, she went several times to Haiti, where she has documented voodoo rituals, producing a series of expressive portraits and moving scenes flanked by engaging documentary observations. Rituals in Haiti was shown for the first time in the 2001 Venice Biennale.
Cristina García Rodero has received many prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Fotografía in 1996 in Spain. Her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally. She has published several books and has been a member of the agency Vu for more than 15 years. Garcia Rodero joined Magnum in 2005 and became a full member in 2009.
Alex Webb
ABOUT ALEX WEBB
Alex Webb is best known for his complex and vibrant color photographs of serendipitous or enigmatic moments, often in places with socio-political tensions. Over the past 45 years, Webb has worked in places as varied as the U.S.-Mexico border, Haiti, Istanbul, and, most recently, a number of U.S. cities.
In 1974, the 22-year-old Webb began working as a professional photojournalist, going on to work for the New York Times Magazine, Geo, Life, National Geographic, among other magazines. Working mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, he credits those cultures with inspiring his interest in color, when he transitioned from black-and-white photography in 1979.
Webb has published 16 photography books, including Memory City (with poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner), a meditation about film, time, and the city of Rochester, NY, itself, the long-time home of Kodak, in the year following the company’s bankruptcy. He has received numerous awards and grants including a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, and the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000.
In 1974, the 22-year-old Webb began working as a professional photojournalist, going on to work for the New York Times Magazine, Geo, Life, National Geographic, among other magazines. Working mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, he credits those cultures with inspiring his interest in color, when he transitioned from black-and-white photography in 1979.
Webb has published 16 photography books, including Memory City (with poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner), a meditation about film, time, and the city of Rochester, NY, itself, the long-time home of Kodak, in the year following the company’s bankruptcy. He has received numerous awards and grants including a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, and the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000.
Martin Parr
ABOUT Martin Parr
Martin Parr’s unmistakable eye for the quirks of ordinary life has made him a distinctive voice in visual culture for more than 30 years. Known for his use of garish colors and esoteric composition, he has studied cultural peculiarities around the world from Japan to America, Europe, and his home country of Britain.
Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK. When he was a boy, his budding interest in photography was encouraged by his grandfather George Parr, himself a keen amateur photographer. Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic, from 1970 to 1973. Upon graduating, he worked at Manchester Council for Community Relations for three months and then started working towards his first exhibition, Home Sweet Home, at the Impressions Gallery in York.
Parr has published over 100 books of his own work and edited another 30. His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions around the world. Parr has also curated many acclaimed shows including Strange and Familiar in March 2016, at the Barbican, London, which examined how international photographers from 1930s onwards have photographed in the UK.
Parr has received numerous awards over the years including the Sony World Photography Award for Outstanding Contribution to Photography in April 2017, the Erich Salomon Prize in 2006 which resulted in the Assorted Cocktail show which opened at Photokina and the Baume et Mercier award in 2008 in recognition of his professional career and contributions to contemporary photography. In autumn 2017, the Martin Parr Foundation opened in Bristol.
Parr’s major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery opened in March 2019. He became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1994.
Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK. When he was a boy, his budding interest in photography was encouraged by his grandfather George Parr, himself a keen amateur photographer. Parr studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic, from 1970 to 1973. Upon graduating, he worked at Manchester Council for Community Relations for three months and then started working towards his first exhibition, Home Sweet Home, at the Impressions Gallery in York.
Parr has published over 100 books of his own work and edited another 30. His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions around the world. Parr has also curated many acclaimed shows including Strange and Familiar in March 2016, at the Barbican, London, which examined how international photographers from 1930s onwards have photographed in the UK.
Parr has received numerous awards over the years including the Sony World Photography Award for Outstanding Contribution to Photography in April 2017, the Erich Salomon Prize in 2006 which resulted in the Assorted Cocktail show which opened at Photokina and the Baume et Mercier award in 2008 in recognition of his professional career and contributions to contemporary photography. In autumn 2017, the Martin Parr Foundation opened in Bristol.
Parr’s major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery opened in March 2019. He became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1994.
