Eve Arnold: she chased the image that told the story

So who was this person watching political dissidents get drugged in a Russian lunatic asylum in 1966, or right up in the face of an American Nazi at a rally? She was a small Philadelphia Jew of Russian extraction, the first woman to join the Magnum picture agency, who had learned from its founder Robert Capa to “dare”. Arnold disliked being used as a feminist mascot – she always said she was a photographer first and a woman second – and the real interest lies not in the social significance of her position but in the effect this had aesthetically. She never claimed to be objective.