A bright light cast upon the world

It's been more than a decade since Auckland was treated to an exhibition of works by photographers from Magnum Photos, a co-operative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger.

Their aim was to establish "a community of thought ... a curiosity about what is going on in the world ... and a desire to transcribe it visually". Magnum photographers have chronicled major world events over the past six decades and studied social, environmental and political issues. The images disturb, amuse or just make you wonder what makes people tick.

You can see for yourself when works by five Magnum photographers screen on the exteriors of buildings in Takapuna and Central Auckland from next weekend to mark the start of the Auckland Festival of Photography.

The photographers are Olivia Arthur, from Britain, whose Middle Distance series explores the lives of women in eastern Europe; Dane Jacob Aue Sobol, who moved to Tokyo in 2006 and took photos to overcome loneliness; Alessandra Sanguinetti, of Argentina, whose Adventures of Guille and Belinda traces the lives of two cousins as they grow up on a farm; South African Mikhael Subotzky, whose series on life inside a Cape Town prison will give the Sensible

Sentencing Trust much to ponder; and American Peter van Agtmael, who covered war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sanguinetti initially produced a series called On the Sixth Day that centred on the relationship between farmers, their animals and the land. While working on this, she met Guille and Belinda whose families worked on those farms. The cousins were 10 and 9 years old when Sanguinetti began to photograph them, focusing on their dreams and imaginations.

"I have attempted to interpret the ending of their childhood by entering their imaginary spaces. The time when their dreams, fantasies and fears fuse seamlessly with real day-to-day life are ending and the photographs I have made intend to crystallise this rapidly disappearing personal and free space," she writes.

In an article called War Uncensored published by the ABC, Peter van Agtmael describes his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Van Agtmael covered events for three months while embedded with infantry units in Baghdad from January 2006. He returned in June, stationing himself at the combat support hospital in the Green Zone.

"It was here that the scale of the violence taking place in the capital was made abundantly clear," he wrote. "While life on patrol was more boring than terrifying, the hospital was inundated with war's ravages."

After his return to America, he said, "Slowly I began thinking about returning to Iraq. I went to Afghanistan instead. I had seen so little coverage from that war and I hoped I could contribute something. But as I tried to fund my trip, I was met with apathy.

"While my agency had helped me to fund my Iraq trips through assignments from American magazines, the only publication that has published the Afghan work is Croatian.

"The war in Afghanistan was equally real. On my first mission with the medevac unit we picked up a bloody stretcher carrying a dead American soldier covered by a blanket. His buddy, shot in the chest in the same ambush, faded in and out of consciousness on the frantic flight to the nearest hospital."

In 2006, van Agtmael was named one of 25 up-and-coming American photographers by the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 2007, he won a World Press Photo Award for his images of night raids in Iraq.

Auckland festival of photography

What: Magnum Light Nights
Where and when: North Shore Environmental Services carpark, Huron St, Takapuna, May 30-31, 6-10pm each day

What: Big Little City Light Nights
Where and when: New Gallery, Wellesley St East, June 2-4, 6-10pm each day

On the web: www.photographyfestival.org.nz