The history of photography

The history of photography

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

The expert guest is Dr Mirjam Brusius, a research fellow in colonial and global history at the German Historical Institute.

First, we hear about Martín Chambi - Peru's pioneering documentary photographer.

Then Amaize Ojeikere talks about his father, JD 'Okhai’ Ojeikere, who created an iconic collection revealing the elaborate ways African women styled their hair.

Plus, the story of Magnum Photos – the picture agency started up by World War Two photographers.

And, Vivian Maier, the nanny who - since her death - has been hailed as one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.

Finally, the mystery behind Lunch Atop a Skyscraper – the famous photograph showing 11 ironworkers eating lunch nearly 70 storeys high.

Contributors:

Roberto Chambi – grandson of photographer Martín Chambi Dr Mirjam Brusius - research fellow in colonial and global history at the German Historical Institute Amaize Ojeikere – son of photographer JD 'Okhai’ Ojeikere Christine Roussel – Rockefeller Center archivist Jinx Rodger - widow of George Rodger, one of the founders of Magnum Photos Inge Bondi - Magnum Photos employee

This programme has been updated since the original broadcast.

(Photo: Two books of photographs in the exhibition 'Martin Chambi and his contemporaries’. Credit: Getty Images)

Episoder(470)

When Belgium Banned Coca Cola

When Belgium Banned Coca Cola

A strange illness strikes Belgian teenagers, Brazil's forgotten Amazon war, diverting Mount Etna's lava, arguments over aid and trade in the UK, and the 1973 oil crisis.(Photo: A poster saying 'out of order' is stuck on a Coca Cola vending machine in Mouscron, Belgium in 1999. Credit: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images).

20 Okt 201851min

The Street Battle That Rocked Brazil

The Street Battle That Rocked Brazil

In October 1968, students from two neighbouring universities in the centre of São Paulo clashed in a battle which left one dead and many injured. We hear how the so-called 'Battle of Maria Antônia' drove Brazil deeper into a military dictatorship which is still controversial to this day. Plus, a pioneering race relations case in Britain during World War 2, the invention of artificial skin and fashion in the Soviet Union.Photo: the 'Battle of Maria Antonia', São Paulo, 1968. Credit: Agência Estado/AFP

6 Okt 201850min

The Arnhem Parachute Drop

The Arnhem Parachute Drop

Operation Market Garden - the failed attempt to end the war against Hitler; plus, a deadly nuclear accident in Brazil, the film of the Battle of Algiers, the last regular steam train to run in Britain and one of the Cuban Five jailed in America for spying for Fidel Castro.(Photo: Allied planes and parachutists over Arnhem, Getty Images)

22 Sep 201850min

How I Survived a Fire on a Plane

How I Survived a Fire on a Plane

A lucky escape from a jet plane fire in the 1970s, Chamberlain's talks with Hitler in 1938 plus the killing of the South African anti-apartheid campaigner, Steve Biko. Also toxic waste being shipped around the world in the 1980s and how Britain became obsessed with the idea that aliens were responsible for crop circles.(Photo: Ricardo Trajano as a young man. Copyright: Ricardo Trajano)

15 Sep 201850min

Living under Gaddafi

Living under Gaddafi

Award-winning writer Hisham Matar on life in Gaddafi's Libya, plus how British Bengalis faced the far-right in 1970s east London, the last battles of WW1, the struggle to name St.Petersburg and the first MRI scanner.Photo: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli on September 27th 1969, shortly after the bloodless coup that brought him to power AFP FILES/AFP/Getty Images)

8 Sep 201850min

Surviving the "Death Railway"

Surviving the "Death Railway"

A former prisoner of the Japanese in WW2, plus Hitler's girl guides, how Benidorm became a tourist hotspot, Italian migrant tragedy in post-war Belgium, and the Lake Nyos disaster.Photo: Allied Prisoners of War in a Japanese prison camp 1945 (British Pathé)

1 Sep 201851min

Albert Speer - Hitler's Architect

Albert Speer - Hitler's Architect

Hitler's architect and minister of war, Albert Speer, was one of the few top Nazis to live on into old age. In the late 1970s, following his release from Spandau prison, he gave an interview to the British journalist, Roger George Clark. Plus, the Soviet Union's campaign against alcoholism, the hostage drama that gripped West Germany, and a woman's voice from pre-colonial Nigeria.Picture: Albert Speer standing at the gate of his house near Heidelberg in December 1979. (Credit: Roger George Clark)

25 Aug 201850min

Vera Brittain: Anti-Bombing Campaigner

Vera Brittain: Anti-Bombing Campaigner

Baroness Shirley Williams recalls her mother, WW2 anti-bombing protestor; 20 years since a mass killing in Omagh, the African-American photographer whose coverage of Martin Luther King's funeral won him a Pullitzer Prize, plus when TV finally came to South Africa and the birth of the instant noodle.Photo: Vera Brittain at Euston Station, London, in 1956. Credit: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

18 Aug 201850min

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