Happy birthday to Pablo Picasso, who was born on October 25, 1881. The artist who brought us Cubism allowed many of his camera-wielding contemporaries to document his life, even up to the night he died. Here is a selection of portraits of Picasso, along with some of the artist’s words of wisdom.

• “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”
  
  Pablo Picasso pictured with his wife Olga, 1919. Photograph by Popperfoto/Getty.
• “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
  
  Pablo Picasso leaving his atelier, Paris, 1944. Photograph by Robert Capa/Magnum.
• “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
  
  Pablo Picasso on the beach in Provence, France, with his son Claude and his partner Françoise Gilot, 1948. Photograph by Robert Capa/Magnum.
• “I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.”
  
  Picasso at his Paris studio, 1948. Photograph by Herbert List/Magnum.
• “People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”
  
  Picasso in Vallauris, France, 1948. Photograph by Robert Capa/Magnum.
• “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”
  
  Picasso at the beach, 1949. Photograph by Gjon Mili/Time & Life Pictures/Getty.
• “Anything new, anything worth doing, can’t be recognized.”
  
  Picasso light-drawing with a flashlight, 1949. Photograph by Gjon Mili/Time & Life Pictures/Getty.
• “Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.”
  
  Picasso checking Brigitte Bardot’s face with a light meter during the Cannes Film Festival, 1956. Photograph by Jerome Brierre/RDA/Getty.
• “What a sad fate for a painter who loves blondes, but who refrains from putting them in his picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit! What misery for a painter who hates apples to be obliged to use them all the time because they go with the cloth! I put everything I love in my pictures. So much the worse for the things, they have only to arrange themselves with one another.”
  
  Picasso and Jean Cocteau at a bullfight in Vallauris, France, 1956. Photograph by Patrick A. Burns/RDA/Getty.
• “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
  
  Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends. Photograph by Rene Burri/Magnum.
• “I paint the way someone bite his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don’t know nor can I do anything else.”
  
  Picasso, 1962. Photograph by Horst Tappe/Hulton Archive/Getty.
• “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.” —Pablo Picasso’s final words.
  
  Pablo Picasso and his wife Jacqueline entertaining friends at the party during which he died. Mougins, France, April 8, 1973. Photograph by Raph Gatti/AFP/Getty.

“For the past generation or two,” George Packer writes in our Politics Issue, “Washington has been the not so hallowed ground for a political war. This conflict resembles trench warfare, with fixed positions, hourly exchanges of fire, heavy causalties on both sides, and little territory gained or lost. The combatants wear red or blue, and their struggle is intensely ideological.” One week last month, the photographer Platon made a series of portraits of some of Washington’s leading political warriors. Here is a gallery of this Portfolio, captioned with the subjects’ own words. Click on the red arrows in the upper right corner for a fullscreen view.

• “What he does do is bring people together and find the common ground, which is so hard to do. There’s a real absence of trust here in Washington, because people spend all their time trying to make political hate today rather than thinking about the long-term needs of the country. You know, Al and I disagree on some things, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like each other, or that we don’t have common ground, or that we can’t be friends.” —Erskine Bowles (right), who served as chief of staff in the Clinton White House, speaking of Alan Simpson (left), a former Republican senator from Wyoming.
• “It was a tragedy and we’ve learned to live with it—it’s not pleasant for Jim at all—but people have to realize that this happens every day. Everyday, 32 people are killed in this country, and many more injured—and injured severely, like Jim. And it just goes by as though it’s nothing. And you think, is there something we can do? It really was several years later before we got involved. It wasn’t a snap decision at all, but we saw a solution, something that might help.” —Sarah Brady, who lobbies for gun control with her husband, Jim, who was paralyzed during an attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life, in 1981.
• “We’ve always had a difference of opinion in our political world. We are a democracy, so we don’t all think alike and we have the opportunity to express that. But I think the stagnation that exists now is quite new, and the way to get beyond it is for the Republicans to take back their party from the extreme radical anti-government ideologues who have taken control of it…. So I say to my Republican friends, take back your party. We need that for our democracy.” —Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats and former Speaker of the House.
• “I think Washington in some ways gets a bad rap. Everyone says ‘inside the Beltway’ is such a terrible place, but a lot of decent people are doing their best inside the Beltway. I think people can work together and they have worked together on a bunch of things…. Some of my best friends are liberals. Not too many, but a few. This is what people like me do for a living, is have arguments. It would be boring just to hang out with conservatives.” —William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.
• “The animosity, the meanness in politics, wasn’t there when I started, I think…. I’ve worked with liberal Democrats, they were friends with their conservative counterparts. That’s kind of gone in Washington politics. Here, people don’t talk to each other, they don’t know each other. I think it’s what Gingrich gave to American politics. Their whole style of success was built around trying to rip the other guy down. It’s a fever, I don’t know if it will break.” —John Podesta, founder of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress.
• “There is a fundamental belief by the American people that we need to have a balanced government, and it began with our founding, the fact that we have three parts of our government that it’s set up not for things to happen immediately but over a period of time and that there’s an appeal process to it. So I don’t get caught up in a lot of the teeth gnashing that I hear from certain people now that politics is the worst ever. Because it’s not. Go back and look at what was said about George Washington, or Jefferson, or Lincoln.” —Robert M. Duncan, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who now heads a group that promotes coal-generated electricity.
• “What worries me is whether we will have enough of a force to make the world a better place. There are tremendous forces in all directions all the time and it really is: Who has the power? I hope that it is the people on the ground, in their towns, in their schools, who have the power to make their home and their environment cleaner, more welcoming, more secure, and that they have a voice in their political system to enable that to happen.” —Frances Beinecke, president of the nonprofit environmental action group, National Resources Defense Council.
• “When I think about those lobbyists or other forces who are corrupting the policy arena or trying to stop environmental regulations from being enforced, I want to ask them how they get up in the morning, or how they sleep at night, how they speak to their children, what they say to themselves is their mission in life. Is it to protect corporate power? Honestly, do they think that the free market is going to solve humanity’s problems?” —Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace in the United States.
• “I hope that America will return to its social structure that has the family as the basic element of society. This is what we’ve got away from in recent years. The absence of marriage is the big cause of the economic problems, the job problems, the unhappiness problems. And a society that is built on the intact family is really the most stable way for individuals as well as for the country, and unfortunately we’ve lost a lot of that in recent years, and I hope people can realize that the family structure should be the basis of our society.” —Phyllis Schlafly, a leading conservative voice since the nineteen-sixties.
• “I think there’s a political gridlock. I think Washington is completely dysfunctional. And it’s too bad, because it actually does have a huge impact on people’s lives. Unfortunately, I think too many politicians begin to lose sight of why they came in the first place. I mean, the most amazing people I meet who are in politics came because they wanted to get something done, and if you lose sight of that, you just sort of lose your way. Unfortunately, people get there and realize nothing’s going to get done, so it all becomes about survival—political survival.” —Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

• Peter Sutherland
• Sandy Kim
• Jim Mangan
• Jason Nocito
• Kate Steciw
• Asger Carlsen
• Andrew Kuo
• Tim Barber
• Jessica Eaton

“Attachments,” a group photography show featured in this week’s Goings On About Town section, opened this Saturday at The Hole. Curated by Kathy Grayson and Tim Barber, the show features work by nine contemporary photographers: Barber, Andrew Kuo, Asger Carlsen, Jason Nocito, Jessica Eaton, Jim Mangan, Kate Steciw, Peter Sutherland, and Sandy Kim.

I asked Grayson about the title. “ ‘Attachments’ was a suggestion by Tim that we both loved because it emphasizes the digital nature of image making and viewing—most people will only see this show on the internet or in an e-mail attachment,” she said. “But it also emphasizes the community nature of the show. All these photographers are friends and know each other. I was interested in photographers who blurred the boundaries of what photography is. Jason Nocito is a book maker whose publishing instincts lead him to install works like he lays out pages; Tim is a curator whose curatorial practice influences his own work. Sandy Kim’s life is one major documentary project which she releases a little bit of online every day. Jim Mangan treats photo like cinema.” Here’s a selection of the work, on view at The Hole through November 3rd. Click on the red arrows in the upper right corner for a fullscreen view.

Yesterday was Cravat Day in Croatia. The cravat, the prototype for the modern necktie, first appeared in Croatia in the seventeenth century. In belated recognition of the occasion, please enjoy this selection of male neckwear as pictured by Magnum photographers.

• At the bowling green. Chew Stoke, England. Photo by Martin Parr.
• Mosul, Iraq. Photo by Thomas Dworzak.
• Tokyo, Japan. Chris Steele-Perkins.
• U.S. attachés during the annual “Day of the Army,” 1988. Guatemala City, Guatemala. Photo by Larry Towell.
• Egyptian workers trying to flee Libya, 2011. Tripoli, Libya. Photo by Moises Saman.
• A boy selling ties. Bangalore, India. Photo by Christopher Anderson.
• Bogota, Colombia. Photo by Alec Soth.
• New York, U.S.A. Photo by Bruce Davidson.
• Outside the stock exchange, 1937. Paris, France. Photo by Robert Capa.
• Lisbon, Portugal. Photo by David Alan Harvey.
• Singles party. Shanghai, China. Photo by Patrick Zachmann.
• Outside the Golden Tulip Hotel. Accra, Ghana. Photo by Stuart Franklin.

Click on the red arrows in the upper right corner for a fullscreen view.

• The “Ranch House,” an outpost in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan, 2007. Peter van Agtmael/Magnum.
• Scott Jones near Fort Drum after returning from a fifteen-month tour to Afghanistan, 2007. Peter van Agtmael/Magnum.
• A reporter and soldiers wait for one of the last groups of Americans returning from Iraq to arrive at Fort Hood, 2011. Peter van Agtmael/Magnum.
• 
• Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where many of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, 2008. Peter van Agtmael/Magnum.
• From “The Dusty Path.” Islamabad, October, 2008: A dust storm in the countryside. Massimo Berruti/Agence VU.
• Rawalpindi, March, 2009: Police officers at work protecting an injured man assaulted by an unknown person and for unknown reasons. Massimo Berruti/Agence VU.
• NWFP, Peshawar, Pakistan, June, 2009: A funeral for an old man killed in a suicide blast in a open market. Massimo Berruti/Agence VU.
• Karachi, Pakistan, September, 2010: The body of a twenty-year-old man killed in a market by unknown gunmen. His mother and the rest of his family gather around him to carry him home for the funeral. Massimo Berruti/Agence VU.
• From “The Silence of Others.” London, 2010: From left, Minhaj, Ashiq, Shofique, and Abid, just before they left London to attend a gathering on “Islam and Young Muslims” in Birmingham. Bharat Choudhary.
• Brighton, 2012: Rida Awan and her husband, Omar, share a quiet moment at the Brighton beach on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. Bharat Choudhary.
• London, 2011: Members of a role-play team after their act at a local community center, about the problems young Muslims face and the examples of ancient Islamic leaders. Bharat Choudhary.
• From “Shadow Lives.” Migrant workers plant cabbage near McAllen, Texas. Jon Lowenstein/Noor.
• A border-patrol training exercise in New Mexico. Jon Lowenstein/Noor.
• A birthday party in the back yard of a Mexican migrant family on Chicago’s South Side. Jon Lowenstein/Noor.
• From “I am a Man, Libya.” A young revolutionary changes from shoes into combat boots. Michael Christopher Brown.
• “This series was not in the portfolio submitted for the Gene Smith award, but in some ways is more telling of what the body of work is about, which is about going to war for the first time, for the Libyans and also for myself.” Michael Christopher Brown.
• “This work is being assembled into a book (with Peter van Agtmael’s help, I might add!), which I hope to self-publish in the near future.” Michael Christopher Brown.
• From “When the Spirit Moves.” A boxing match between two friends in the neighborhood referred to as the “Madi Block,” one of the more violent areas of Chester, Pennsylvania. Justin Maxon.
• Children racing down the street in the William Penn housing project, which is notorious for being one of the most violent areas in the city. Justin Maxon.
• “I’ve witnessed tragedy here, but I have witnessed equal moments of strength and beauty.” Justin Maxon.
• From “Afghan Women.” Obbaidullah and Nargas, both high-school students, take a break in their bedroom after two nights of celebration of their wedding in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2008. Farzana Wahidy.
• An Afghan woman gets her hair and makeup done for a wedding party in a beauty saloon in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2011. Farzana Wahidy.
• An Afghan policewomen, Nasima Hotak, is seen at her office during their celebration of Women’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2010. Farzana Wahidy.
• From “Loaded.” Chava shows his nephew, Anthony, how to fire a ball-bearing gun, 1993. Robert Yager.
• Money collected from crack-cocaine sales is counted next to a sleeping baby. Robert Yager.
• Lil’ Ricky learns to swim at Castaic Lake, August, 1999. Robert Yager.
• From “Watching the Second Hand of a Clock.” A Kashmiri man sits inside a police van after he was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir police for protesting with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, in Srinagar, March 20, 2004. Ami Vitale/Panos.
• Indian Border Security Force soldiers patrol Dal Lake in boats. Ami Vitale/Panos.
• Villagers mourn five people who were killed when a grenade exploded in the hands of a man who was seeking to extort money from a family in Badgam district. Ami Vitale/Panos.

On Wednesday evening, the Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael accepted the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant for Humanistic Photography in a ceremony at the School of Visual Arts. The grant is awarded to support and encourage a photographer working in the spirit of the legendary photojournalist, and van Agtmael plans to use the thirty-thousand-dollar grant to build on “Disco Night September 11,” his ongoing project on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their consequences in the United States. “As an American of the generation shouldering these wars, I feel a strong responsibility to document their cost,” van Agtmael said. “The Iraqis and Afghans that have been the most affected remain depersonalized and shadowy in our collective consciousness.” Van Agtmael said he hopes to pursue the deepest thread in his work: the idea that history is built upon good people resisting the tide of evil. “I’ve seen a nasty and primal side of mankind,” he said, “but it’s been balanced by enough displays of extraordinary humanity to give me hope.” (See the video van Agtmael made to accompany “The Throwaways,” Sarah Stillman’s recent piece in the magazine about the confidential informants.)

Above is a slide show of van Agtmael’s images, along with those of Massimo Berruti, who won the W. Eugene Smith fellowship to continue his work on Pakistan. “The Dusty Path,” Berruti said, is a project “about a nation trapped between violence and political corruption. A trembling giant on the brink of a deep abyss.” Also included is work by Michael Christopher Brown, Bharat Choudhary, Jon Lowenstein, Justin Maxon, Ami Vitale, Farzana Wahidy, and Robert Yager, who were all finalists for these grants. (Last year we featured Maxon’s work on Photo Booth.) Click on the red arrows in the upper right corner for a fullscreen view.