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.
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