Middle Eastern identity from II. World War until oday and Magnum Photography Agency

The concept ?Middle East? came into usage at the beginning of the 20th century. As time went by, this concept took different meanings and a different coverage according to the ideology and intentions of its user. Although the boundaries of this concept are ambiguous and the geography it represents has always been very important for the world history. The Middle East is the geography where the three major monotheistic religions came to life, where writing was invented, where agriculture was first put to practice and where the concept of state was born. The religion of Islam, which came to life in the 7th century, became the main religion for almost the whole of this geography. After the brilliant period between the 8th and the 18th centuries under the sovereign of different dynasties, people witnessed this geography becoming the setting of never-ending conflicts, wars and invasions in the last two hundred years. Napoleon?s invasion of Egypt in 1798 may be seen as the starting point of this period. Another development seen in the past two hundred years is the development of photojournalism. Visualization began with illustrations in newspapers and reached its supreme together with the contribution of photographs. Especially the 1920?s were the years in which photojournalism came to be what it means today. The rapid developments seen in photojournalism gave way for the photography agencies to come to life; these agencies produced visual material for the press. One of the very important examples is the Magnum Photography Agency. It was founded by four young photojournalists in 1947. The contributions it has made to the common memory of people are indisputable. Indeed, one can not imagine that an agency which was the pioneer of photojournalism hadn?t worked in a geography which has become a continuous source of news. On the contrary, for many of the Mangum photographers the Middle East has been a very important working area since the establishment of the agency. In the last 60 years the understanding of photojournalism has been through big modifications. Especially the competition of television forced photojournalism to develop new visions. The works of Magnum in the Middle East gives very important clues about the last 60 years of this geography and the changes photojournalism has been through.