Moving History from Manhattan to Austin

The print archive from the Magnum Photos collective recently made its way to Austin, where it will be studied and exhibited for the next five years.  Michael Dell, the computer maker, and two art collecting partners made the purchase, and insured the archive for $100 million as it was transported from Manhattan.

Randy Kennedy described the sale for readers of the the grey lady. “It is one of the most important photography archives of the 20th century, consisting of more than 180,000 images known as press prints, the kind of prints once made by the collective to circulate to magazines and newspapers. They are marked on their reverse sides with decades of historical impasto — stamps, stickers and writing chronicling their publication histories — that speaks to their role in helping to create the collective photo bank of modern culture.”

A quick scan of the bookshelves in my office shows a couple dozen volumes from Magnum founders and early members such as both Capas, HCB and Chim.  Alex Webb, Phillip Jones Griffiths and Ian Berry have kept the traditions of the founders alive, and have pushed the medium forward, along with young guns such as fellow Indiana University alum Chien-Chi Chang, Christopher Anderson and Paolo Pellegrin.

Peress damned near invented new photographic language with his seminal Telex: Iran from the 1979 revolution, and now the agency is trying to create new material for newer viewers through Magnum in Motion.