road trip

announcements

*the official Magnum website  blog will undergo a revival with editor martin fuchs coming on board soonest....martin is the current author of "Journal of a Photographer", one of the most popular european photo blogs....martin will coordinate stories with all Magnum photographers and plans lively discussions to totally make our blog user friendly and fresh.....

*as part of our continued efforts to create interesting and useful educational opportunities for photographers, Magnum will offer free portfolio reviews for emerging photographers this year at  the Visa Pour L'Image  Photo Festival in perpignan, france.....the professional photographers week is september 3-9....we have done gratis reviews for several years at perpignan, but this year will be highly organized and selected  portfolios will be discussed in an open forum...attending Magnum photographers will be paolo pellegrin, elliott erwitt, dennis stock, chris anderson, and others to be announced.....i will give you  more details soonest....

business meeting...

i now have about 20 minutes to "get my act together" and be on time for a magnum business meeting....actually, there are now three full days of magnum business meetings staring me square in the face....numbers....graphs......charts.....project approval....more numbers....

just a few hours ago we were all having so much fun at MOMA and the after party and the after party after the after party on my roof....and now this.....numbers....reality....i have a headache already...

at some point all of us do have to face the undeniable fact that we are in business....we have to sell our pictures....just like a farmer has to grow tomatoes and then get them to market.....growing the reddest, biggest tomato is not the only part....you have to get them to market....

magnum did not survive for 60 years without some kind of "business plan" although all of us sort of smile when the term is even mentioned.....because none of us are "businessmen"....most of us cringe at the thought and i,  for one, certainly chose photography as a profession and a life  to avoid the very business meeting i am about to attend....

are all of you out there good at the "business" side of our art??  what is the proportion of your time spent in taking pictures as opposed to thinking about balancing your check book???

i  suppose you already know what my answer is!!

farmers and surfers

yes, we really do have all types of photographers and personalities in magnum...here larry towell and trent parke hang out after our long long day of portfolio reviews in new york...there were 7 of us looking at the work of 60 photographers for our first ever "First Impressions" review (see "portfolios" post previous)...

this is our big week....our annual meeting of magnum photographers from all over the world starting with our 60th anniversary champaign toast  at the Museum of Modern Art where we were founded....since the first of june , we have 90+ events going on all over town as part of the Magnum Festival...exhibitions, seminars, book signings, etc etc...

for those of you who are in new york now, please join us for a drink and "hang time" at the Half King Bar, 505 west 23rd street this evening between 7-9pm....no event... just late afternoon light and a cold beer with joseph koudelka, alex webb, lise sarfati,paolo pellegrin, susan meiselas, alec soth , jonas bendikson, maya goded, trent park, larry towell, martine franck,  etc etc etc .....pretty much the whole bunch of us...yes,me too....

do not be shy, just come on by....