‘Close Enough’ in Berlin: Intimacy explored by 12 Magnum ladies photographers

When are you truly shut sufficient?

The famend Magnum photograph company has gathered the work of a dozen feminine photographers at C/O Berlin for guests to discover intimacy and decide for themselves how shut the digital camera needs to be to the topic.

The exhibition was initially present at New York’s International Center of Photography in 2022 to mark the company’s seventy fifth anniversary.

“It is an important exhibition for us because it shows the changes that the agency has undergone over the decades,” explains Andrea Holzherr, curator for Magnum Photos.

“We evolve with the times by bringing young photographers into the agency every year”, provides Holzherr.

Bedroom portraits

There was no deliberate resolution to increase Magnum’s portfolio of ladies photographers. It’s been a pure growth as extra ladies have chosen to seize life from behind a digital camera. One of them is Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian.

“We used to talk to each other for hours,” says Tavakolian a few sequence of portraits she took in her personal bed room. She invited her neighbours in entrance of the digital camera and generally needed to do a little bit of persuading.

“We wanted to understand each other and then find common ground. And then they sort of gave me permission to portray them.” Tavakolian’s work is understood for her highly effective storytelling and her capacity to seize human emotion.

She was the youngest photographer to cowl the scholar rebellion in Tehran in 1999. She started working for the Iranian ladies’s newspaper Zan on the age of 16.

Tavakolian needs to each seize and cease time together with her portraits. With {a photograph}, “you freeze time,” she tells Euronews Culture. “Then viewers can spend as much time as they want looking at the picture.”

“Now everyone has this tool in their hands,” Tavakolian continues referring to the digital camera in cell phones. “It’s no longer about being privileged or not. It’s about what you have to say.”

With her portrait sequence, she conveys a snapshot, but in addition the state of a society. Tavakolian has obtained quite a few awards, together with the Carmignac Gestion Award and the Prince Claus Award.

Politics, society, up to date historical past – what makes images particular lately?

“It’s about people all over the world, in their communities. It’s about politics, society and contemporary history,” says curator Andrea Holzherr. “We can’t tell that story with our mobile phone pictures.”

For the twenty fifth anniversary of C/O Berlin, the exhibition might be offered in Berlin in an tailored and expanded model. A central theme operating by way of the works within the exhibition is the examination of the connection between photographers and their topics.

Inspired by a well-known quote from Magnum co-founder Robert Capa – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” – the exhibition title additionally questions his commentary.

The exhibition Close Enough is on at C/O Berlin till 28 January 2026.