Magnum Distributions, 1947–1960: Photographers’ Emancipation and Concessions
Résumé
Magnum Photos is a legendary photographers’ cooperative, which produced iconic pictures and helped define and promote the profession of photojournalist. This paper interrogates the agency’s contribution to the history of post-war photojournalism during its first years (1947-1960), focusing on “distributions”, sets of pictures with accompanying texts and captions that were circulated internationally to magazines and partnering agencies. Distributions renewed the tradition of the photo-essay and inspired generations of Magnum photographers. In Magnum’s myth, they have been presented as a revolutionary invention that enabled photographers to secure complete control over their work, embodying the cooperative’s ideals of freedom and independence. This paper argues that distributions played indeed such a role, but indirectly, as a process rather than a result: they were in fact a stepping stone that helped Magnum members to support their personal work. This study demonstrates how, during the agency’s first years, distributions represented a compromise between the photographers’ visions and the needs of the market. Distributions thus form one specific instance of the famous nexus between words and pictures, and art and journalism.
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