Biography: Eve Arnold was born in Philadelphia in 1912 to Russian immigrant parents. She began photographing in 1946, while working at a photo-finishing plant in New York City, and then studied photography in 1948 with Alexei Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research in New York.
Arnold first became associated with Magnum Photos in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. She went to England in 1962 to put her son through school, and except for a six-year interval when she worked in the US and China, she has lived in the UK ever since.
Her time in China led to her first major solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1980. In the same year, she received the National Book Award for In China and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. Since then, she has had 12 books published.
In later years she received many other honours and awards. In 1995 she was made fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer - the world's most prestigious photographic honour - by New York's International Center of Photography. In 1996 she received the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for In Retrospect, and the following year she was granted honorary degrees by the University of St Andrews, Staffordshire University, and the American International University in London.
Eve Arnold visited the Gallery of Photography for her exhibition, In Retrospect, which was staged in 1997-8.
Now 96 and rather frail, she recently had her assistant email the Gallery, recalling her visit here with fondness and wishing us every success with The Light Room.
