The longevity of Eve Arnold's career as a photographer matched the heterogeneity of her work. Despite the success of her portraits of the rich and famous, Arnold, who has died aged 99, was equally well known for photographing "the poor, the old and the underdog". She said: "It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is."
In fact she achieved the reverse, showing us the often pathetic and banal in the lives of the glitterati she always shot without the benefit of artificial lights, as well as how ordinary daily lives, from Afghanistan to Zululand, were never mundane. As the war photographer and Magnum co-founder Robert Capa put it: "[Arnold's work] falls metaphorically between Marlene Dietrich's legs and the bitter lives of migratory potato pickers."
Eve Arnold obituary on The Guardian - Slideshow on Magnum Photos