Ernst Haas

The Austrian amateur photographer Ernst Haas’ first photographs, showing injured soldiers returning from war, were published in "Life" magazine. He was invited by Robert Capa to join the "Magnum" photographic agency in 1949, and later became its president and joint owner. In 1951, Haas began experimenting with the recently developed Kodachrome colour film, and the first ever exhibition of colour photography at the MoMA in New York included some of his works. His images covered a wide variety of motifs, including landscapes, his chosen home of New York and Spanish bull-fights, but he also documented the making of films, for example with Woody Allen and Marilyn Monroe, and travelled the world for his reports and book projects. He was particularly interested in Japanese culture and the imagery of Zen Buddhism.