« The product of eight years of thought and work, Erich Hartmann's Our Daily Bread is his lyrical tribute to the men and women everywhere whose daily work helps to create the bread which feeds us all and which has become a metaphor for sustenance. His photographs make a picture-poem of the significance of bread to us all » Ruth Bains Hartmann
Magnum photographer Erich Hartmann's long-term project shows the human work involved in making Our Daily Bread.
On a photographic trip across America in 1954, Erich Hartmann first became aware of the vast American Midwest grain belt, spending some time in a small Oklahoma town called Freedom. From these beginnings grew an interest and commitment to photograph Our Daily Bread, a concept common to all, which he saw as extending from land-clearing through planting and harvesting to the feeding of millions. Over the years as assignments took him around the world he was always alert to situations and places which added materials to his project - land workers in Israel, combine harvesting in Nebraska, a miller in rural France, a soup kitchen, a Paris bakery, grain barges on the Mississippi, Bedouin in Beersheba selling grain at market, traders on the Grain Exchange, a school cafetaria.
By 1962 Hartmann was approached by the Pillsbury Company to have Our Daily Bread as their contribution to the international Food Conference at the Coliseum in New York. The result was a large exhibition, conceived and designed by Hartmann.
Our Daily Bread is now, for the first time, published as a book.
Born in Munich, Erich Hartmann (1922-1999) fled to the USA in 1938 and later worked as a freelance photographer in New York. Invited by Robert Capa to join Magnum in 1952, he was for many years on the board of directors, becoming president in 1985. As a photojournalist, he traveled all over the world on assignments from newspapers, magazines and corporate clients. He pursued many personal projects, for instance in the 19990 he photographed the remains of the Nazi concentration camps, resulting in the book and exhibition In the Camps (1995)
Our Daily Bread Erich Hartmann
Kehrer Verlag
144 pages
32,6 x 23,8
49,90€