Eve Arnold, in retrospect

by Eve Arnold

Here is Eve Arnold - the distillation, in words and pictures, of her life and her lifework. Her story challenges many of our casually held notions about photography, photographers and the careers of women in the second half of our century, and presents us with a set of happy contradictions. For Eve Arnold managed to become and remain one of the world's leading photographers without ever succumbing to trendiness or self-aggrandizement; she rapidly reached an extraordinary level of professionalism and achievement with almost no formal training; she succeeded as an American in England and as a woman in a (mostly) man's world; she grounded herself emotionally as a mother and grandmother while working nonstop around the world; she proved herself a master of both black-and-white and color; she became both an ardent social critic - of McCarthyism, apartheid, poverty - and a mirror of glamour and highlife, photographing Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, presidents, prime ministers, royals; and sh