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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Reading Magnum: Photo Archive Gets a New Life

by Steven Hoelscher and Andrea Gustavson

When photographer Bruce Davidson boarded a Greyhound bus on May 24, 1961 in Montgomery, Alabama, he joined a group of 27 students, ministers, and activists determined to challenge the South’s segregation laws. In response to two earlier busses carrying anti-segregationist Freedom Riders—the first one firebombed and the second attacked by a mob wielding iron pipes—the federal government stepped in and ordered armed National Guard soldiers to provide protection. It was a moment of high drama in the Civil Rights movement, one that both exposed the bitter racism along the way from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, and one that sorely tested the activists’ belief in nonviolent action. Davidson’s photographs portray something of that drama as they show a secret meeting before the ride, young men and women waiting to board the bus at the segregated station, groups along the route including white men heckling the Freedom Riders and black residents standing among National Guardsmen.

One picture succinctly captures the complicated emotions and political tensions of the scene: taken from inside the bus looking out, it portrays both the young activists and the armed escort ordered to protect them (above). This photograph, and others like it, circulated widely from the November 12, 1961 issue of The New York Times, to Raymond Arsenault’s 2007 Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, and to the cover of Davidson’s own 2002 book, Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs, 1961-1965. An icon of the Freedom Riders’ struggle, it is featured on the 2010 American Experience documentary website.

Figure 2_Davidson Freedom Riders verso

Verso from press print by Bruce Davidson, taken “aboard the Freedom Riders’ bus, Montgromery [sic] Alabama, 1961.” Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

The photographic print that brought the image from Davidson’s photo agency, Magnum Photos, to newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and websites carries its history on its back. If we turn over the print, we find a message board of scribbled notes, agency stamps, archival references, photo credits, hastily written captions, and a stamp identifying the photo as part of the Magnum Photo New York Print Library. So many times has the photograph been sent to various publishers and then returned to Magnum that a staff member wrote in bold, black lettering, the word “RETIRED,” suggesting that this particular print’s utility has come to an end.

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Like the print itself, the collection of photographs to which it belongs is now also retired—at least from its previous occupation of carrying the image it bears to publishing venues. Davidson’s print came out of retirement in the summer of 2010—or, more accurately, it took on a new life—when the Magnum Photo New York Print Library was opened for research at the Harry Ransom Center, a research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The Magnum Photos collection, as it is now known, is comprised of some 1,300 boxes containing more than 200,000 press prints and exhibition photographs by some of the twentieth century’s most famous photographers. Once Magnum began using digital distribution methods for its photographs, the function of press prints as vehicles for conveying the image became obsolete and these photographs became significant solely as objects for both monetary and historic value.

Figure 4_Capa

Death of a Loyalist militiaman. Córdoba front, Spain, 1936, ©Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

Magnum’s visual archive is a vast, living chronicle of the people, places, and events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Images of cultural icons, from James Dean and Marilyn Monroe,to Gandhi and Castro, coexist in the Magnum Photos collection with depictions of international conflicts, political unrest, and cultural life. Included are famous war photos from the Spanish Civil War and D-Day landings to wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as unforgettable scenes of historic events: the rise of democracy in India, the Chinese military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the Iranian revolution, and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Figure 3_Arnold

Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Long Island, New York, 1955, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Finally, scenes of everyday life in a wide range of historical contexts—from immigrant communities in New York City to Romani communities in Czechoslovakia, and much more—comprise an extraordinarily valuable visual archive.

Figure 8_Chang

A newly arrived immigrant (Tang Z) eats noodles on a fire escape. New York City, 1998, ©Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos

Figure 7_Hoepker

View from Brooklyn. New York City, September 11, 2001, ©Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos was formed in 1947, in the wake of the Second World War, by four photographers seeking to retain the rights to their images while working on projects that aligned with their own interests rather than solely responding to commissions from magazines and newspapers. Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger, and Robert Capa created a business model that fundamentally changed the practices of photojournalism, allowing the image-maker, rather than the magazine, to retain control over published work. This shift allowed Magnum photographers to emphasize their artistic integrity and fosters independence in terms of subject matter.

Figure 5_Meiselas

Soldiers search bus passengers along the Northern Highway in El Salvador, 1980 by Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos.

The result was a new way of doing assignment photography so that members of the Magnum collective were free to pursue projects that spoke to their personal, political, and artistic concerns. While Magnum’s working model has evolved over time, Capa’s initial idea was that members would place images, often in the form of extended photo-essays, in various publications and across several geographic markets. The publication fees earned would be shared between the photographer and the agency with part of the earnings made available to finance further projects. Although Magnum Photos was formed during and sustained by the postwar heyday of picture magazines such as Life, Look, Picture Post, and Illustrated, the cooperative still exists and recently celebrated its 65th anniversary.

Figure 6_Franklin

A column of T59 tanks makes its way from Tiananmen Square along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. A solitary protester stands determined in the center of the road, blocking the tanks. Beijing, China, June 4, 1989, ©Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

The organization of the Magnum Photos collection at the Harry Ransom Center directly reflects the working practices of the photography collective. A key component of Capa’s plan was the repackaging, recaptioning, and redistributing of images as photo-essays once the images were no longer immediately newsworthy. Practically speaking, this meant that images like Eve Arnold’s iconic photograph of Malcolm X might have been made into multiple prints and filed in several different file folders that eventually were placed into archival boxes including the box designated “Eve Arnold 1961-1964,” another designated “X, Malcolm 1925-1965,” and a third designated “Historical 1960s,” and a fourth designated “Social Protest.”

Figure 10_Arnold Malcolm x

Malcolm X during his visit to enterprises owned by Black Muslims. Chicago, IL, 1962, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos.

Eventually the physical photographs were returned to the Magnum office to be stored in file cabinets and boxes labeled by photographer and by a range of subjects and thematic groupings. This organizational structure has been preserved in the archival collection at the Ransom Center. The 169-page finding aid has sections for individual photographers, public personalities, and geographic regions. It also contains subject groupings such as “World War II” or “Motherhood” or “National parks” and also more idiosyncratic thematic categories such as “Time and Measurement” or “Historical Emotions, 1970s.”

Figure 9_Koudelka

Reconstruction of a homicide. In the foreground: a young gypsy suspected of being guilty. Jarabina, Czechoslovakia, 1963, ©Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

These subject categories evolved along with the press print library as different librarians, archivists, and interns sought to structure the collection in ways that would make the images accessible and reusable. In this way, the press print library with its organizational structures and its multiple copies of each photograph was an attempt to make the objects—the press prints—function in service of the image content.

Historians are encouraged to visit the Reading and Viewing Room at the Harry Ransom Center, where the Magnum Photos collection is open for scholarly research and teaching and fellowships are available to support that research. To be sure, many of Magnum’s images are available online through its website. But to understand these photographs in their historical context—both how they circulated throughout the world and how the photo agency kept them in the public’s eye—direct engagement with these remarkable primary sources is essential.

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Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World by Steven Hoelscher

This essay is derived from a longer article to be published in Rundbrief Fotografie. We thank the editor for permission to reprint here.

Want to read more about Magnum Photos and photojournalism? Click here.

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Head Photo:  National Guard Soldiers escort Freedom Riders along their ride from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. Montgomery, Alabama, 1961, ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

All photos: Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center with permission from Magnum Photos for any promotional work associated with Reading Magnum.

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George Orwell: A Life in Letters (2013)

by Benjamin Griffin

Peter Davison’s careful selection and annotation of George Orwell’s personal correspondence in provides an engrossing autobiography of a man whose work continues to resonate globally in significant ways. griffin orwell A Life in Letters covers the breadth of Orwell’s life and provides an intimate and detailed look at his personality, influences, and beliefs.  Davison is enormously successful in allowing the letters to improve our understanding of a broadly misunderstood man and to tell the story of a truly remarkable life.

Orwell’s letters are of particular value in depicting the changing way the world defined communism and socialism.  Orwell’s dispatches from Spain show his personal, if accidental, involvement in the battle between Stalin and Trotsky.  The ideological purge of the International Brigade forced him to depart Spain or face execution by Soviet proxies.  Upon return, his letters demonstrate frustration with the refusal of traditional socialist journals to publish his works due to this perceived ideological taint.  Later, Orwell finds he is unable to publish Animal Farm during World War II in part due to the British desire to maintain the positive image of Stalin and the Soviet Union, who were allies against Hitler.  Despite finding success with Animal Farm and 1984, his letters also reveal a frustration with those who feel he is defending the status quo of western life, which is a perception of his work that still exists.  Orwell claims that these people are “pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism.”  Elements of Orwell’s alternative democratic socialism are scattered throughout his correspondence, and the reader comes away from A Life in Letters with a good sense of how Orwell defined the responsibilities of government.  Orwell’s letters reinforce his other writings that advocate political reform to eliminate class-based inequalities, such as access to education and medical care, while still guaranteeing individual freedoms.

Throughout the letters the mundane sits in close proximity to the profound.  A notable example comes in a letter to working-class novelist Jack Common, in which Orwell first advises him on the proper thickness of toilet paper for use at Orwell’s country home before delving into a withering criticism of the “utter ignorance” of left wing intellectuals who believed they could use the upcoming Second World War to start a violent revolution in Britain.  It is the mundane details that reveal Orwell’s personality.  He was generous to friends and strangers alike, but was generally pessimistic about himself, his writing, and the future, and his chauvinism destroyed several friendships.  Contrasts like these serve to humanize Orwell, and separate the man from the prophet.

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Davison works diligently throughout A Life in Letters to ensure that the reader never loses track of the context in which Orwell wrote.  Many of Orwell’s letters are indecipherable without Davison’s frequent and detailed footnotes identifying literary references, personal connections, and world events.  Likewise, the inclusion of brief biographies of recipients in the bibliographical summary illuminates the broad variety of people with whom Orwell corresponded.  The division of Orwell’s life into eight eras, and inclusion of a brief overview ahead of each part also helps shape the readers focus and makes finding specific letters easy.  The main flaw in A Life of Letters is one of repetition.  Davison often includes multiple letters from a brief period which contain the same content.  There is also little correspondence from Orwell’s time in Burma, a key period in the development of his anti-imperialism.  Whether this is due to a lack of available content or editorial decision is unclear.

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Orwell’s writing in letters is as thoughtful and enjoyable as his prose.  They show Orwell as unwilling to merely comment on the injustice he sees and  his focus on tangible actions keeps the readers’ interest as easily as any thriller.  The result is a detailed and intimate account that touches on the defining issues of international relations in the twentieth century and questions on the role of the state which remain topics of intense debate.

Photo Credits:

1950s dustcover for George Orwell’s 1945 novel, Animal Farm (Image courtesy of Michael Sporn Animation)

Orwell at his typewriter (Image courtesy of Getty Images)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

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You may also like:

William Wilson’s review of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s 1938 memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War

Undergraduate Essay Contest Winner: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

by William Wilson

George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is an interesting work. Orwell, best known for his later novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, wrote Homage shortly after his experiences in Spanish Civil War.image The book is Orwell’s personal narrative of his time spent fighting in trenches and behind barricades while slowly gaining an understanding of the politics that lay beneath the conflict. The book is not only a fascinating glimpse into a unique epoch but a fine example of Orwell’s writing style and personal life. Orwell, after all, has become a historical figure.

On 17 July 1936 right-wing nationalists within the Spanish military launched an attempt to overthrow Spain’s Second Republic. The trade unions and left-wing political parties seized arms and raised militias in support of the Republic. Spain became the flashpoint for all of Europe’s political forces almost overnight. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy supported the Nationalist forces while the Soviet Union threw its weight behind the Republicans. Like thousands of others, Orwell traveled to Spain in order “to fight fascism.” He had arrived in December 1936 and joined the P.O.U.M.’s militia unit based largely upon chance.

Orwell served for a hundred and fifteen days on the front lines near Zaragoza. Most of his time was spent in trenches scrounging for firewood and trying to dodge friendly fire. His survival thus owed much to the poor marksmanship of his fellow militiamen and to the poor quality of their rifles.

After his time at the front he returned to Barcelona. It is here that Orwell tells us that the people had fought not so much for the Second Republic as for a social revolution. The anarchists and other left-wing groups had used the early days of the war to establish workers control where possible. It was this revolution that the Second Republic and their Soviet-backers wanted to reverse in the name of war-time expediency. The tension among the coalition of forces in the Second Republic erupted during the Barcelona May Days in which Orwell took part. The result, as witnessed by Orwell, was a power-grab by the central government and the outlawing of anti-Stalinist parties such as P.O.U.M. Many of Orwell’s comrades were arrested, killed, or simply disappeared in the confusion that followed. He noted with horrible irony that young men fighting and dying for the Second Republic, many of whom were still on the front lines, were being denounced as traitors simply because they belonged to the wrong political party. Orwell and his wife fled to France before becoming victims themselves.

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Orwell wrote that he had not realized the significance of the events in Spain until afterward. The book ends with Orwell, in spite of everything, affirming his belief in the decency of human beings.  It is an ending that stands in contrast to Nineteen Eighty-Four, written a decade later, which culminates with the main character completely broken, tears rolling down his face, and affirming his love for “Big Brother.” Perhaps the significance of what Orwell witnessed in Spain escaped him longer than he realized.

Photo credits:

Unknown photographer, Ruins of Guernica, 1937

Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) via Wikipedia

Check out the other winning and honorable mentions submissions for our First Annual Undergraduate Writing Contest!:

Carson Stones’s review of Odd Arne Westad’s Global Cold War

Lynn Romero’s review of Open Veins of Latin America

Katherine Maddox’s review of Beirut City Center Recovery

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