Faculty and Grad Research: Dr. Steve Hoelscher and Andi Gustavson on the Magnum Archive

Today we bring you a lovely piece hosted on the UT History Department's Not Even Past website: Dr. Steve Hoelscher and Ph.D. candidate Andi Gustavson have teamed up to bring you this piece on the Magnum archive of photography. We've reprinted an excerpt below; take a look at the full article here.

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.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.

Announcement: Dr. Steve Hoelscher Speaks on "Reading Magnum" Tomorrow @ The Jones Center

Thursday evening, November 21, at The Contemporary Austin / The Jones Center (700 Congress Ave, downtown), Dr. Steve Hoelscher will be speaking about his most recent project, Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World. We spoke with Dr. Hoelscher a few weeks back about this exciting new book, and he was also featured recently on KUT. The Austin Center for Photography, UT Press, and The Contemporary Austin will host a book signing and reception Thursday from 5:00-7:00pm, and Dr. Hoelscher will offer remarks at 6:00pm.Here's a little info from the Austin Photography Center on the Magnum Photos archive and on Dr. Hoelscher's's important new book:

The Magnum Photos archive—a collection of more than 200,000 photographs by some of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries’ greatest image makers—is the most comprehensive accumulation of prints made by the distinguished photo cooperative. Consistently and with striking artistry, Magnum’s photographers have done more than simply document the far reaches of the globe; they have helped shape generations’ understanding of the world around them. While many of its photographs have been widely published, no one has examined the Magnum archive itself until now. Reading Magnum presents this first examination of the archive, now housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.