Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Eve Arnold in Los Angeles, 1960.

*Top,* a view from the Robert F. Kennedy funeral train, by Paul Fusco, 1968; *above,* the corner of Sepulveda and Washington Boulevards, in Los Angeles, by Dennis Stock, 1960.

Spectators at a space-age air show in Nevada, by Cornell Capa, 1959.

*Top,* Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, by Alex Webb; *above,* downtown Manhattan as seen from “lovers’ lane” in Jersey City, by Thomas Hoepker, 1983.

A storage yard for David Adickes’s presidential heads, in Houston, Texas, by Mark Power, 2018.

*Top,* an American soldier killed during the battle for Baghdad, by Alex Majoli, 2003; *above,* D-day soldiers arriving at Omaha Beach, by Robert Capa, 1944.

A strike captain during a national protest against meatpacking companies in Chicago, by Wayne Miller, 1948.

*Top,* protesters marching for George Floyd in Brooklyn, by Bruce Gilden, 2020; *above,* segregated water fountains in Wilmington, North Carolina, by Elliott Erwitt, 1950.

A voter-registration drive to help sign up Black voters, held in a former gallows near Selma, Alabama, by Bruce Davidson, 1965.

*Top, a* couple getting arrested for selling drugs on Hollywood Boulevard, by Jim Goldberg, 1988; *above,* a photograph from *I Am About to Call It a Day,* a book by Bieke Depoorter, 2010.

America’s Sweethearts

A new coffee-table book presents a visual history of the United States from the 1940s to today, courtesy of Magnum photographers

For some time, a myth about Magnum Photos swirled around photography circles. It was said that the world’s most prestigious photo agency—founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David “Chim” Seymour—was named after an enormous bottle of champagne. Legend had it that the bottle was enjoyed during a celebratory lunch at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, in the sculpture garden.

Though untrue, the story captures the founders’ spirit. In 1947, the evils of W.W. II were still raw. Cartier-Bresson had endured three years in a German internment camp; Rodger had escaped Japanese soldiers through a Burmese rainforest; Seymour’s Polish-Jewish parents were murdered by the Nazis; and Capa’s partner Gerda Taro was killed by a tank during the Spanish Civil War. Still licking their wounds, the men set out to capture America’s rebirth.