“Billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm, MSD Capital LP, has acquired about 185,000 vintage photographic prints from the Magnum Photos agency in what is thought to be among the largest photo transactions in history.” (story)
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Melanie McWhorter just published a post in which she mentions a detail of a talk Alec Soth gave in New Mexico: “At one point, he said that one fellow Magnum photographer, who I will not mention here, viewed his work as mean-spirited. He left this description with very little detail in the beginning, but when he reached a particular image, he said this is the one that sparked the comment.”
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Alessandra Sanguinetti started a discussion about the New York Times’ choice of imagery for their Gaza war coverage and got some responses from colleagues Christopher Anderson and Alex Majoli.
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A little while ago, Alec Soth asked his Magnum colleagues what advice they would give young photographers and posted the results over at Magnum’s blog. As could be expected, the post generated a lot of excited responses, but there were also some rumblings to be found all over the web (see an example here). I admit I was a bit surprised by the discontent the Magnum post created, and it made me think about what people were actually expecting (I initiated a bit of a discussion about this here). But I also started to think about something else, namely about photography collectives and their paucity.
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Alec has been working hard to create some great contents for the Magnum blog, and his latest post, Wear Good Shoes: Advice to young photographers is a must read. 35 different photographers tell you their secrets of success - there’s gotta be something for everybody…
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By now, everybody probably knows that Alec Soth has returned to blogging, over at Magnum’s blog. Today, he posted a conversation with Alex Webb about Alex’ work for InSight America.
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“Who are the people of America? What are we thinking? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us hope? Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple? What is the American Dream today? InSight America is an innovative documentary project that aims to explore these questions on the eve of one of the most important elections in American history. Calling on the talents of some of the world’s most respected photojournalists, using the Web to update their observations daily, InSight America is a collage of personal investigations and reflections that attempts to capture the things preoccupying Americans during the weeks leading to Election Day.”
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I just found - via PDNPulse - that Peter van Agtmael, one of my Photographers of the Year 2007 has become a Magnum nominee (find the conversation I had with him here). And Alec Soth is now a full member (find the conversation I had with him here). Congratulations to both and to the other new nominee Olivia Arthur and full members Jonas Bendiksen and Antoine d’Agata!
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