Description

In 1964 David Hurn was asked to be the “special photographer” for the Beatles film, A Hard Days Night. “Sometimes people don’t realize the magnitude of their own achievements,” reflects Hurn.“They are clueless to the boundaries they have already crossed to get where they are. My picture shows the four members studying pages of the script for the following days of the film’s shooting. It takes place in the Abbey Road Studio, the scene of so many of their musical triumphs. I cannot help but wonder if they were thinking of their futures. The Beatles gave their last concert only two years after this film was released.”

Life, as it unfolds in front of the camera, is full of so much complexity, wonder, and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities. There is more pleasure, for me, in things as they are

David Hurn
© David Hurn | Magnum Photos

A self-taught photographer, David Hurn (b.1934) began his career in 1955 as an assistant at the Reflex Agency. He gained his early reputation through his reportage of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1967.

In 1973 he set up the School of Documentary Photography in Newport, Wales and remained director until 1989.

His work is held in major collections including British Council, London; ICP, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Bibliothèque nationale de France and National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, amongst others.

David Hurn continues to live in, and work from his home in Tintern, Wales.

© David Hurn | Magnum Photos

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