Magnum Photos
About
Magnum Photos represents some of the world’s most renowned artists and photographers, maintaining its founding ideals and idiosyncratic mix of journalist, artist and storyteller. For over 70 years Magnum Photos has provided the highest quality photography to an international client base of media, charities, publishers, brands and cultural institutions.
2020 Leadership Award Winner
Image: Jonas Bendiksen, Satellites, Altai Territory, RUSSIA, 2000. Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Environmentalists fear for the region’s future due to the toxic rocket fuel. © Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum Photos
In 1947, following the aftermath of the Second World War, four pioneering photographers founded a now legendary alliance. Combining an extraordinary range of individual styles into one powerful collaboration, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and David Seymour started, over a celebratory bottle of champagne, the most important artists’ cooperative ever created: The Magnum Photos agency.
Magnum Photos represents some of the world’s most renowned photographers, maintaining its founding ideals and idiosyncratic mix of journalist, artist and storyteller. Our photographers share a vision to chronicle world events, people, places and culture with a powerful narrative that defies convention, shatters the status quo, redefines history and transforms lives.
Susan Meiselas, NICARAGUA. Esteli. 1979. Sandinistas at the walls of the Esteli National Guard headquarters. © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos
Newsha Tavakolian, IRAN. 2015. An Iranian woman walks through a haze of smoke caused by the burning of the herb esfand. According to popular belief, this ritual drives away the evil eye. © Newsha Tavakolian/Magnum Photos
Eli Reed, USA. Montgomery, Alabama. 1995. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. © Eli Reed/Magnum Photos
For nearly 70 years Magnum Photos has been providing the highest quality photographic content to an international client base of media, charities, publishers, brands and cultural institutions. The Magnum Photos library is a living archive updated regularly with new work from across the globe.
Magnum has documented most of the world’s major events and personalities since the 1930s; covering industry, society and people, places of interest, politics and news events, disasters and conflict. In short, when you picture an iconic image, but can’t think who took it or where it can be found, it probably came from Magnum.
Magnum photographers are a rarity and the agency is self-selecting; membership is a minimum four year process and is considered the finest accolade of a photographer’s career.
Magnum Photos reaches a global audience and has established itself as the authentic, storytelling photographic brand. It remains loyal to its original values of uncompromising excellence, truth, respect and independence.
Photo Credit: HOF Inductee: ©Matika Wilbur
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