Magnum Blog / Digitizing the Magnum archive

Digitizing the Magnum archive

With an archive comprised of photos from 110+ artists shot over the span of 70 years, the task of digitizing Magnum's archive is a daunting one, to say the least. While Magnum's active photographers are still producing and submitting new work, the archive is the greatest source of images being added to the digital database. While the word archive evokes images of rows of print-boxes, cabinets containing duplicate slides and shelves of contact sheets and captions, which one might find in three of Magnum's four offices, the term might be applied to all material which exists in and out of the office in their original form, i.e. negatives and original chromes. Magnum's New York office As mentioned above, various forms of photos exist in the physical archives. There is an estimated one million photographs in the New York office archive. These can be either prints (most are black and white on either resin or fiber-based paper), slides of black and white prints, duplicate color slides and original color slides of all sizes, though the vast majority of these chromes are 35mm. The black and white material is stored in folders within custom-made boxes and the chromes are stored within archival sleeves which hang in filing cabinets.

R.

Good cheer! Don't give up your work is important for the Memory!

:-/

Davin Ellicson

Hi Matt,

What is Magnum using in each of the offices to scan everything, sets of Imacon 949s?

DEGHIA FAIROUZ

Que peux t ' on faire contre la censure artistique ! merci

Sana Manzoor

A good insight into the very important archival process at magnum. I myself very recently was privileged to experience something very similar. An established and very famous 50+ year old newspaper (with its other various publications), just recently took up this process. The publications (in my home country) introduced its dusty boxes and old cartons full of photographs (journalistic, fashion, etc ) to the digital world. The start is always very difficult but the outcome very fruitful. This understanding is very crucial, since by digitizing archives, it will not only preserve it but also make it more manageable. Since in this day in age, time is of utter importance. And the computers no matter how troublesome they can be at times; are infact a very resourceful tool for a photographic agency or any company for that matter. So best of luck to all the staff and fellow members for taking up this "archival venture" for this agency. May the "red room" soon duplicate itself as a "digi-room" in cyber world.

Borut 5

Is it a secret what software do you use for a digital photo archive?
Cheers,
B5

John Vink

1/ This shows how spoiled some Magnum photographers are: they have people doing jobs, for example captioning, they, as professional photographers, should be doing themselves.
2/ Determining what to digitize based upon sales and requests done by clients is obvious but also extremely dangerous: Magnum archives should be (much) more than market oriented if it wants to keep its creative independence...
3/ Image numbers are referenced in invoices but with a number created by Cortex and not the unique Magnum number. This Cortex or "short" number makes it much more difficult for the photographer to know which of his pictures were sold where or whom to because 4/.
4/ Cortex can be consulted by the photographers in the Magnum offices only. Consultation of the database by photographers outside the office can be done via the web, but management of the (his) base is completely unrealistic that way. Cortex is a fantastic tool for the staff but not really for the photographers...

As a conclusionn here are my two cents: the digitization of Magnum's archive has been the most important step undertaken by the agency in the last 15 years, and as it is Magnum owes its survival to it. There is a double price tag attached though... First, the photographers leave a bigger percentage to the agency to finance the digitization, but a vast majority of the photographers agrees to do so, means there is no problem. The second price the photographers have to pay is a degree of alienation to their pictures. Let's keep that in mind...

Also: I am glad to hear there is now a Magnum Foundation. Could we have more details?

Tim Freh

Ik hoop dat ze nog alle files goed kunnen terugvinden ;).

Davin

John, It is interesting to learn that the 'representation' of Magnum photographers seems to vary.

lino sprizzi

Dear Magnum, Happy Birthday!

sergei isakov

17 April 1947. 60 years. Happy Birthday!

Zsolt

This would be a job I d love to do.. Working on archiving. :)

Mazen.J

Magnumphotos.com today has this “creative film-look” to it, just like the work produced by its members since the beginning, rather than the tacky-photo look of other leading agencies. They publish anything with a politician or a blazing body with no consideration to creativity, aesthetics and powerful impression. I hope you keep pushing hard on creativity for the photojournalism commercial market, which after all sets you in a total unique category.
Great Great!