Shanghai Center of Photography (SCôP) is pleased to announce the upcoming Spring exhibition “Two Magnum Masters: Berry and Barbey”. Opening reception is on March 12th, 2016, please stay tuned!

British-born Ian Berry and Frenchman Bruno Barbey are two of the most long-standing and respected photographers within the Magnum collective. Each joined in the 1960s – Ian Berry in 1962 at the personal invitation of Henri Cartier-Bresson, becoming a full member in 1967; Bruno Barbey began a relationship with Magnum in 1964, becoming a full member in 1968. Bruno Barbey served as Magnum vice president for Europe in 1978 and 1979, and as President of Magnum International 1992-95.

Ian and Bruno had produced a seminal series of photographs that signified their talent, intellectual concerns and the eye for the moment within the times that they each brought to their observations. For Ian Berry it was in South Africa in 1960, a nation at the height of apartheid; for Bruno Barbey, it is his essay “Italians” completed in the early 1960’s. Both photographers would continue to travel the world and to cover some of the most significant political, social and economic events of the second half of the twentieth century.

Both photographers have also been regular visitors to China for a number of decades, and have produced works now familiar to local photographers and lovers of photography. For this exhibition, however, each presents a medley of iconic images from their broader careers. For Ian Berry, we focus on his work in South Africa, beginning in 1960, and on “The English”, a study which began in the early 1970s, and which here is broadened to be more fully “British”. For Bruno Barbey, we present richly-colored scenes from his extraordinary global travels, studies of people and place and the diverse moments in which he was witness to history, beginning in 1960 with the Italians.