Marseille is a love letter from an American to France’s oldest and second largest city. Joan Liftin’s photographs of Marseille, one of Europe’s most ethnically diverse cities, show us a place where much of life still unfolds on the street. The city’s spirit and raffish glamour resides in its people rather than in its monuments, and Liftin captures day and nighttime encounters, moments of quiet beauty, allusions to corrosive crime and poverty, and the diverse heartbeat of this soulful Mediterranean port city. Her photographs offer us an honest, intimate vision of Marseille, at once timeless and passionately alive. Joan Liftin’s photographs have appeared in New York Times Magazine, Aperture and Creative Photography. Her work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Princeton University, and the Center for Creative Photography, Tuscon, among others.
Joan Liftin has worked as a photographer, photo book editor and teacher for many years. She is the author of three photo books Drive-Ins (2004), Marseille (2015) and Water For Tears (2018). Liftin was Chair of the Documentary Program at the International Center of Photography (from l988 to 2000) and the Director of Magnum Photos library.