cover image Arresting Time: Reportage Photography 1948–1973

Arresting Time: Reportage Photography 1948–1973

Alistair Crawford, . . Quantuck Lane, $75 (456pp) ISBN 978-1-59372-020-9

This stupendous and endlessly browsable collection by Austrian Magnum contributor Lessing is as complete an overview of European postwar history as it is possible to imagine coming from the lens of a single photographer. Joining Magnum in 1951 after a few years with the Associated Press, Lessing exemplifies the virtues of the collective founded in 1947 by a group that included Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa—a highly developed eye for the "decisive moment" combined with the technical mastery necessary to turn those moments into dramatically composed tableaux. Another advantage of being part of Magnum's dominance of postwar journalistic photography was access. Whether it was into Vivien Leigh's dressing room or the depths of a West German coal mine, Lessing got let into a lot of places and took full advantage. His most famous photographs were taken during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, and they remain the most thorough photographic documentation of that turning point in Cold War history. The photograph of a group of young men removing the portrait of Lenin from the walls of a town hall is as full of iconic power as a painting by David. And the image of an ethereally beautiful woman in a 1958 Berlin nightclub playing with a blonde curl beside the graffito signature of future terrorist Ulrike Meinhof distills a half-century of history into one fleeting gesture. Alistair Crawford's introduction helps contextualize Lessing's achievement, but every few paragraphs the reader will inevitably stop reading to flip once again through this truly magnificent volume. (Nov.)