"Some people say that I am a poet."
Bob Dylan
"Your places are certainly the avenues of Turin, noble and modest, evoking spring and summer, the quiet, confidential and vast places, where your poetry comes from. Their essence originates from other places, but here they were molded," wrote the Italian poet, writer and journalist Cesare Pavese. Mario Magajna’s places were the streets of Trieste, noisy and empty, exalted and humble, exciting and sleepy, but he found poetry, the so-difficult-to-find poetry, also in the Slovenian villages that surround this city in northeastern Italy. He was a passionate photojournalist, constantly in the arena of life, in the middle of the action, as he wrote in his notebook, because you cannot miss any event worthy of being recorded. "If you are not attentive or if you wait for everything to 'fall from the sky', you had better choose a different profession." That is why he always considered himself photojournalist. He did not care for exhibitions, his medium was the newspaper, namely the Slovenian daily Primorski dnevnik. He left the detection of poetry in his pictures to others.
A man is wandering in the water. His pants are rolled up. He is holding a scythe and a rake in his hands, on the shoulders he carries an empty basket. He is watching us. Not amazed, without interest, but clearly showing us that we were noticed. That is all. There is nothing momentous in this image, but nevertheless we are captured by it. Its narrative strength penetrates us deeply: maybe due to its nearly candid Christian iconography, or its aesthetic perfectionism or simply the historicity of the moment. In fact, all these elements are already so ideally assembled, that we might simply question the authenticity of the picture. But we do not. We trust the picture, not only because we know its author, his professional craftsmanship, his honesty to these places and these people, and, somehow pathetically, even the love that bound him to these lands. With his intuition for choosing the right moment Magajna exceeds our interest in visuality. His images settle into our memory forever. They become part of our imaginary past we are craving for, although we have never experienced it. His pictures embody John Berger’s consideration: they exceed the private and public use of the image. When we, the living ones, take our history upon ourselves, the image recaptures its live context. And this demonstrates once again that Mario Magajna did not consider himself as a reporter of the rest of the world, but as a recorder of those, who are immersed in the photographed events. John Berger believes that the difference is crucial. Let us recall the famous reaper’s look, which extends the image into pure poetry.
For over half a century Mario Magajna devoted himself to documentary photography and photojournalism. His lifelong collaborator, friend and photojournalist Edi Šelhaus wrote that rarely a city could boast such a rich photographic archive as the one his tireless colleague created for Trieste. Mainly, he became known because of his pictures published in the daily newspaper Primorski dnevnik, where he recorded what was happening in the city of Trieste and its surroundings. Important events and everyday life. Through the lenses of his camera he captured his beloved Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Prince Sihanouk, Claudia Cardinale, Caterina Valente and regular people, who in their lifetime probably did nothing so important for the world. According to Primož Lampič, Mario Magajna’s repertoire evolved "in the time of heroic postwar photojournalism, in the turbulent period when demolished equilibria were being gradually re-established, when the centuries-old silt, that the world conflict brought to the surface, sedimented again." Magajna was politically defined, like every great photographer of that time. "I was a regular reporter and a Slovene, and for our people I have done everything I could." A very clear position, not influenced merely by his profession, but also by his commitment to an ideal that made him forget himself in order to photograph for the benefit of the community. Šelhaus himself once said that only someone, who has participated in the resistance movement, could create so intense images: "It should be noted, that this was a time when photographic equipment was so inadequate that if you wanted to take a good shot, you had to get closer and risk your own life."
But poetry, his lyrical poetry is what has drawn us back to re-examine Mario Magajna’s unique photographic archive. Even the images where the photojournalist is not captured in the historicity of the moment, seem eternal. Ian Jeffrey wrote that the most lyrical, and in fact the most complete post-war photographers, who put the people in the foreground, were the Swiss photographers Werner Bischof, Gottard Schuh, Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener and Emil Schultess. Especially Bischof, who photographed the world's worst catastrophes until 1954, when he died in a car accident in Peru, always, wherever he went, even in the most horrible situations, perceived those specific signs of humanity that turn his images into a kind of illusion, as if they were not based on reality. His pictures represent the quintessence of what humanistic photographers had been striving for since the 20’s of the previous century. He found the culmination of joy in a group of Hungarian farmers in the village tavern, the expression of complete dedication in Shintoist believers, the idyll of farm-work in Cambodia or Peru.
Between Mario Magajna’s reaper and Werner Bischof’s flute player (Flute Player, On the Road to Cuzco, Peru, 1954) there are only few differences: Magajna’s picture depicts a man, Bischof’s a boy. The man is holding a tool, the boy a musical instrument. The tool is waiting to be used, the instrument is already being played. The first photographer is seen, the other is not. In Bischof’s image we detect a glorious, almost naive realism, which is not so evident in Magajna’s picture (who would be standing in the water with a scythe and rake in his hands?). Nevertheless, the lyricism, that pure lyricism of the image that makes us fall to the ground, is equally strong in both images.
Werner Bishof’s pictures, as stated by Jeffrey, celebrate an idealized interest for the human being, cleared of the doubts regarding the inequality of the society, far from the local events that attracted André Kertész and the French school. They were the connoisseurs of small and insignificant events that would otherwise go into oblivion, they discovered far from spectacular spaces, they faced social reality, and left the critical rhetoric to their unsignificant heroes. And somewhere in their midst we might place Mario Magajna. His best images have a strong social intensity. Through them he enters the realms of poetry, his people become the troubadours of local events, careful listeners and observers, the best connoisseurs of the social milieu that extends beyond the borders of Mario Magajna’s commitment.
Meta Krese
Berger, John, Rabe fotografije, Založba /*cf., Ljubljana, 1999, transl. by Zoja Skušek.
Jeffrey, Ian, Photography: A Concise History, Thames and Hudson, London, 2010.
Lampič, Primož, Mario Magajna, fotoreporter; dela 1944–1955, Arhitekturni muzej Ljubljana, 1996.
Magajna, Mario, Trst v črnobelem: fotokronika 1945–1980, Založništvo tržaškega tiska, Trieste, 1983.
Magajna, Mario, Obrazi življenja: fotograf Mario Magajna in njegovi ljudje, SEM, Ljubljana 2000.
Magajna, Mario, Barve otroštva v črnobelem, I colori dell'infanzia in bianco e nero, Založništvo tržaškega tiska, Trieste, 2003.
Pavese, Cesare, in 25 anni L'Espresso, I libri dell'Espresso, 1981.
Šelhaus, Edi, Fotoreporterjev obračun, Založba Sanje, Ljubljana, 2010.
Bob Dylan
"Your places are certainly the avenues of Turin, noble and modest, evoking spring and summer, the quiet, confidential and vast places, where your poetry comes from. Their essence originates from other places, but here they were molded," wrote the Italian poet, writer and journalist Cesare Pavese. Mario Magajna’s places were the streets of Trieste, noisy and empty, exalted and humble, exciting and sleepy, but he found poetry, the so-difficult-to-find poetry, also in the Slovenian villages that surround this city in northeastern Italy. He was a passionate photojournalist, constantly in the arena of life, in the middle of the action, as he wrote in his notebook, because you cannot miss any event worthy of being recorded. "If you are not attentive or if you wait for everything to 'fall from the sky', you had better choose a different profession." That is why he always considered himself photojournalist. He did not care for exhibitions, his medium was the newspaper, namely the Slovenian daily Primorski dnevnik. He left the detection of poetry in his pictures to others.
A man is wandering in the water. His pants are rolled up. He is holding a scythe and a rake in his hands, on the shoulders he carries an empty basket. He is watching us. Not amazed, without interest, but clearly showing us that we were noticed. That is all. There is nothing momentous in this image, but nevertheless we are captured by it. Its narrative strength penetrates us deeply: maybe due to its nearly candid Christian iconography, or its aesthetic perfectionism or simply the historicity of the moment. In fact, all these elements are already so ideally assembled, that we might simply question the authenticity of the picture. But we do not. We trust the picture, not only because we know its author, his professional craftsmanship, his honesty to these places and these people, and, somehow pathetically, even the love that bound him to these lands. With his intuition for choosing the right moment Magajna exceeds our interest in visuality. His images settle into our memory forever. They become part of our imaginary past we are craving for, although we have never experienced it. His pictures embody John Berger’s consideration: they exceed the private and public use of the image. When we, the living ones, take our history upon ourselves, the image recaptures its live context. And this demonstrates once again that Mario Magajna did not consider himself as a reporter of the rest of the world, but as a recorder of those, who are immersed in the photographed events. John Berger believes that the difference is crucial. Let us recall the famous reaper’s look, which extends the image into pure poetry.
For over half a century Mario Magajna devoted himself to documentary photography and photojournalism. His lifelong collaborator, friend and photojournalist Edi Šelhaus wrote that rarely a city could boast such a rich photographic archive as the one his tireless colleague created for Trieste. Mainly, he became known because of his pictures published in the daily newspaper Primorski dnevnik, where he recorded what was happening in the city of Trieste and its surroundings. Important events and everyday life. Through the lenses of his camera he captured his beloved Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Prince Sihanouk, Claudia Cardinale, Caterina Valente and regular people, who in their lifetime probably did nothing so important for the world. According to Primož Lampič, Mario Magajna’s repertoire evolved "in the time of heroic postwar photojournalism, in the turbulent period when demolished equilibria were being gradually re-established, when the centuries-old silt, that the world conflict brought to the surface, sedimented again." Magajna was politically defined, like every great photographer of that time. "I was a regular reporter and a Slovene, and for our people I have done everything I could." A very clear position, not influenced merely by his profession, but also by his commitment to an ideal that made him forget himself in order to photograph for the benefit of the community. Šelhaus himself once said that only someone, who has participated in the resistance movement, could create so intense images: "It should be noted, that this was a time when photographic equipment was so inadequate that if you wanted to take a good shot, you had to get closer and risk your own life."
But poetry, his lyrical poetry is what has drawn us back to re-examine Mario Magajna’s unique photographic archive. Even the images where the photojournalist is not captured in the historicity of the moment, seem eternal. Ian Jeffrey wrote that the most lyrical, and in fact the most complete post-war photographers, who put the people in the foreground, were the Swiss photographers Werner Bischof, Gottard Schuh, Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener and Emil Schultess. Especially Bischof, who photographed the world's worst catastrophes until 1954, when he died in a car accident in Peru, always, wherever he went, even in the most horrible situations, perceived those specific signs of humanity that turn his images into a kind of illusion, as if they were not based on reality. His pictures represent the quintessence of what humanistic photographers had been striving for since the 20’s of the previous century. He found the culmination of joy in a group of Hungarian farmers in the village tavern, the expression of complete dedication in Shintoist believers, the idyll of farm-work in Cambodia or Peru.
Between Mario Magajna’s reaper and Werner Bischof’s flute player (Flute Player, On the Road to Cuzco, Peru, 1954) there are only few differences: Magajna’s picture depicts a man, Bischof’s a boy. The man is holding a tool, the boy a musical instrument. The tool is waiting to be used, the instrument is already being played. The first photographer is seen, the other is not. In Bischof’s image we detect a glorious, almost naive realism, which is not so evident in Magajna’s picture (who would be standing in the water with a scythe and rake in his hands?). Nevertheless, the lyricism, that pure lyricism of the image that makes us fall to the ground, is equally strong in both images.
Werner Bishof’s pictures, as stated by Jeffrey, celebrate an idealized interest for the human being, cleared of the doubts regarding the inequality of the society, far from the local events that attracted André Kertész and the French school. They were the connoisseurs of small and insignificant events that would otherwise go into oblivion, they discovered far from spectacular spaces, they faced social reality, and left the critical rhetoric to their unsignificant heroes. And somewhere in their midst we might place Mario Magajna. His best images have a strong social intensity. Through them he enters the realms of poetry, his people become the troubadours of local events, careful listeners and observers, the best connoisseurs of the social milieu that extends beyond the borders of Mario Magajna’s commitment.
Meta Krese
Berger, John, Rabe fotografije, Založba /*cf., Ljubljana, 1999, transl. by Zoja Skušek.
Jeffrey, Ian, Photography: A Concise History, Thames and Hudson, London, 2010.
Lampič, Primož, Mario Magajna, fotoreporter; dela 1944–1955, Arhitekturni muzej Ljubljana, 1996.
Magajna, Mario, Trst v črnobelem: fotokronika 1945–1980, Založništvo tržaškega tiska, Trieste, 1983.
Magajna, Mario, Obrazi življenja: fotograf Mario Magajna in njegovi ljudje, SEM, Ljubljana 2000.
Magajna, Mario, Barve otroštva v črnobelem, I colori dell'infanzia in bianco e nero, Založništvo tržaškega tiska, Trieste, 2003.
Pavese, Cesare, in 25 anni L'Espresso, I libri dell'Espresso, 1981.
Šelhaus, Edi, Fotoreporterjev obračun, Založba Sanje, Ljubljana, 2010.
(c) text Meta Krese, photograph Mario Magajna