Eve Arnold: In Retrospect

An early member of the prestigious postwar cooperative Magnum Photos, Arnold (The Unretouched Woman), for much of a half-century career in photojournalism, arranged her own assignments. For Life, London's Sunday Colour and other top magazines worldwide, she covered screen stars Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe;a colony of centenarians in Georgia, U.S.S.R.; Vatican City, body and soul; and a Dubai wedding featuring a camel race--to name but a few. She did photo-profiles of Indira Gandhi, Mamie Eisenhower, Mikhail Baryshnikov and British PM John Major; publicity stills for The Misfits and several other John Huston films; a number of advertising spreads; and eight text-and-picture books. In an engaging mixture of pride, self-deprecation, personal sentiment and philosophical reflection (``photography flourishes on the absolute''), she here gives a top practitioner's clear and authoritative (if often overly detailed) account of 20th-century photojournalism, now deteriorating, she fears, into ``glitz and packaging.'' Photos. (Nov.)