Legacy & Influence
Martin Munkácsi's photographic practice reordered how the world pictured itself. His insistence that life must be caught, not arranged, spread outward from fashion into documentary, sport, and street photography — through the cameras of those who came after him.
In Their Own Words
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photographer
“It was Munkácsi who showed me that a photograph could be seized in an instant from life itself — not arranged, but discovered.”
Richard Avedon
Photographer, Harper's Bazaar
“Everything I know about movement in fashion photography I learned from Munkácsi. He didn't just change the frame — he changed what was inside it.”
Lillian Bassman
Photographer & Art Director, Harper's Bazaar
“At Harper's Bazaar, Munkácsi's energy was everywhere. He was the reason we all believed the camera should go where the action was.”
Alexey Brodovitch
Art Director, Harper's Bazaar
“He brought to fashion photography the eye of a photojournalist and the instincts of an athlete. Nothing was the same after him.”
Diana Vreeland
Fashion Editor, Harper's Bazaar
“He was the most modern photographer I ever knew. There was no past in his pictures — only the present, moving fast.”
In Permanent Collections
Publications
- Harper's Bazaar1934–1946
- Defining decade of fashion photography under Brodovitch's art direction
- Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung1927–1933
- Pioneering photojournalism and sports photography during the Weimar Republic
- Life1946–1963
- American photojournalism and portraiture for the postwar decade
Retrospective Exhibitions
Martin Munkácsi
International Center of Photography, New York, 2014
Munkácsi
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2009
Martin Munkácsi: Think While You Shoot!
Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, 2011