On the Scene│Ólafur K. Magnússon Press Photographer
When Ólafur K. Magnússon (1926–97) joined daily Morgunblaðið in 1947, he was the first photographer on the permanent staff of an Icelandic newspaper
A young man plays the accordion in the evening outside the Grund nursing home. A child in a Silver Cross pram watches. Circa 1948-1955. Photograph by Ólafur K. Magnússon.
The first day on the Paramount lot will always be the most memorable to me. Trembling in anticipation and trepidation, I first went through the gate at that gigantic enterprise. Once I was inside, a new world was opened up to me, or more precisely a dream world, with its own cities, buildings, streets and inhabitants.
- Ólafur K. Magnússon Vísir (18.05.1946)
Models pose for a photograph, probably somewhere near Los Angeles, 1945-46. Photograph: Ólafur K. Magnússon.
Reykjavík is a strange city of contrasts and paradoxes. It is a peculiar mixture of village and metropolis, refinement and low culture, the past and the new era, organisation and disorganisation, poverty and wealth, age-old heritage and chaos, history and fatelessness. This was the character of the city in which Ólafur embarked on his career, and it is vividly reflected in the photographs he produced during his early years and subsequent decades of work.
Protests and riots at Austurvöllur on 30 March 1949, the day the Althingi (Iceland’s Parliament) approved the parliamentary resolution on Iceland’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Photograph: Ólafur K. Magnússon.
He placed emphasis on the photographer envisaging, as the photographs were taken, how they would come out on the page. What was the most powerful moment in the series of events. That the paper’s readers could always gain the optimum overview of the event in one or two focussed images.
- Ragnar Axelsson, photographer, Morgunblaðið (26.10.1997)