The Magnum Inheritance

Muhammad Ali, 1966. Photo: Thomas Hoepker. Source: Magnum Photos

The photographers that were a part of this collective described history in its most literal sense. They captured moments that were burned into the memory of the generations that grew up before internet and digital photography. An epoch that ended approximately twenty years ago.

The illustration of modern history
The Magnum photographers basically illustrated modern history. Take Josef Koudelka in August of 1968. Russian troops, accompanied by combat units from the Warsaw Pact, invaded Czechoslovakia and ended the Prague Spring. A low point in the history of the Cold War that held Western Europe in its grasp.

The then thirty-year-old Koudelka risked his life with his camera at the ready, capturing the chaos of the desperate Czechoslovakians as the tanks rolled in. It took a year before the prints of Koudelka's photographs could be smuggled out of the country and be published anonymously in the Sunday Times Magazine through Magnum. Koudelka and Magnum made the world a witness to a historical drama.

Many such historical moments have been captured by Magnum photographers. A close-up of the fist of boxer Muhammad Ali captured by Thomas Hoepker. The super sensual black and white photograph of a reclining Marilyn Monroe made by Eve Arnold in 1955. Steve McCurry's world famous photograph of a young Afghan refugee with piercing green eyes from 1984. The photograph Stuart Franklin made in Tiananmen Square of one man forcing five tanks to a halt: The people that gave our collective memory these exciting or dramatic images were all Magnum photographers.

Jackie Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's funeral, 1963. Photo: Elliot Erwitt. Source: Magnum Photos

Worldwide distribution
In view of the technological changes that took place in photography, such as the digitization of images, a collection of prints such as Magnum sent out into the world will never see its like again. The photographers sent their images to Magnum from hotbeds all over the world, to be selected and distributed to the major magazines. Because of this method, the films, photographs, and contact prints were never filed centrally. Some magazines filed by photographer name, some by event, some by date. Combined with the diversity in media (film rolls, contact prints, photographs in varying sizes), often with personal notes from their respective creators, this formed a fragmented and irregularly described, exceptionally analog, collection of data.

PAKISTAN. Peshawar. 1984. Afghan girl in the refugee camp Nasir Bagh. Photo: Steve McCurry. Source: Magnum Photos

A digital overview
Pictura in Heiloo was given the assignment to digitize the existing analog Magnum material and took it upon itself to make it accessible in its own software infrastructure Memorix and describe everything logically. At present, 70,000 Magnum images have been processed by Pictura and some 300,000 still remain. Pictura's account manager Jeroen Bloothoofd is particularly enthusiastic about the material that came his way: "The prints we received from the Magnum photographers are generally of top quality. Magnum has its own lab which provided us with prints that are still in an exceptionally good condition. True craftsmanship."

Besides digitizing and archiving the originals using Memorix, The Magnum project encompasses quite a trajectory of special actions. Bloothoofd explains: “The various editorial-offices that have made use of Magnum over the years, have not always returned their prints to Magnum's central depot in Paris, but have stored them locally. When all these prints in various formats, contact-prints, and films from all over the world were brought together again, the result was not exactly organized.

All these valuable prints arrived unsorted in worn-out boxes. Everything needed to be unpacked, sorted, examined, and described. Finally everything will need to be repacked in acid-free envelopes to preserve the basic analog material.” Jeroen Bloothoofd explains that approximately 70,000 files have presently been processed, and 300,000 are still in storage. “An impressive number, but Magnum’s static archive is finite. Once everything has been scanned the number of duplicates can be mapped, and the condition of the individual prints can be assessed by examining the quality of the scans.”

http://www.magnumphotos.com
http://www.stevemccurry.com/