Magnum Photos is the legendary photo agency responsible in part for breaking barriers in photography, which, until the end of World War II, was separated into editorial, commercial and artistic divisions. To mark its 67th general assembly, which will be held at the end of June in New York, the cooperative is offering an innovative program of public events that confirms its commitment to contemporary photography, in terms of both aesthetics and distribution.
What matters today is immediacy and sharing, and the agency is responding with a series of conversations at the Milk Gallery, NeueHouse and Filson, as well as a 67-hour photo auction. For an agency of Magnum’s stature, where virtually all of its members’ work is distributed through galleries, the originality of this idea is its offer of a selection of signed photographs for a single price of $100, on Instagram, and to only make them available in the square format associated with the platform. In a similar effort to physically democratize the image in response to its recent and massive dematerialization, the Agence VII also organized a similar sale that lasted seven days, although the format remained the traditional 8”x10”.
For Magnum, it’s about multiplying the opportunities for interaction with a devoted audience making use of new technology and reinventing the status of the image. “Magnum Photos’ ‘fanbase’ has been growing exponentially alongside the growth of the average person’s visual fluency in a world where 60 million images are uploaded per day on Instagram. […] By offering a SIGNED (uneditioned) square print for a price far below what our fine-art prints sell for, we’re presenting this rapidly growing segment of our audience a chance to own a small (square) piece of Magnum’s history”, explains Gideon Jacobs, Creative Director of Magnum Photos New York.
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