Description

The Magnum Foundation supports artists who use photography in innovative ways to tell stories. Founded in 2007, the organization is a descendant of Magnum Photos, the documentary photographers’ collaborative founded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1947. The Foundation was established to nurture photography as a means of critical storytelling and social documentation—at a time when photographic technology is more widespread than ever but photography as a critical practice has ever fewer outlets and avenues of support.  The Luce Foundation, through its initiative on Religion in International Affairs, has partnered with the Magnum Foundation since 2016, investing in efforts to document, illuminate, and disseminate visual stories about religion. Those projects resulted in the creation of exhibitions, mobile apps, and on-line archives, among others.  Magnum now seeks to build upon this work in response to the Foundation’s democracy, ethics and public trust initiative. Magnum has issued a global call for proposals from artists and others who use photography as a primary mode of communication. Support will be provided to ten projects that “explore and elevate suppressed histories, revisit monuments and received narratives, and foster creative thinking about constructing new paradigms.”   The artists and teams will receive funding and participate in a series of virtual cohort convenings and workshops that will address their specific needs. Magnum will share the projects publicly in a special issue of Aperture magazine, as well as on-line and in physical exhibitions. The project organizers hope not only to bring the particular stories to wider attention but also to support the development of new modes of visual storytelling and to question the assumptions and practices in which documentary photography has been grounded traditionally.  Magnum’s project takes seriously the role of images in shaping public discourse. Who tells visual stories and which stories get shared with the public define the common sense of a public and thus our understanding of the possible and the needful in public affairs. Any effort to respond to the challenges facing democracy must grapple with the images and stories that shape the public space in which democracy is enacted. Magnum will make a unique contribution to the cohort, helping the Foundation to shape its own work in democratic practice.