Magnum Photos, the legendary photography agency with 77 years of experience, was honored this Wednesday morning with the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord. Founded as a cooperative two years after the end of World War II, the original team was made up of iconic photographers Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger, along with Maria Eisner and Rita Vandivert. With offices in Paris and New York, which were later joined by London and Tokyo, Magnum defended the independence of its members who also retained the rights to the images, which were in no case transferred to the publications that made use of them. This meant that agency members could freely choose which stories to cover. In the decades since then, nearly a hundred photographers have been part of Magnum – among them three Spaniards: Cristina García Rodero, Lúa Ribeira and Cristina de Middel, current president of the agency -, and the images they have taken make up the portrait of the most turbulent moments that the 20th century has left, such as the Civil War, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the War in Vietnam, the Prague Spring, the independence of India…
The agency is distinguished worldwide for its commitment to documentary and journalistic photography. His are some of the most iconic images of the past decades, such as The dead militiaman, which shows a republican soldier shot dead, of Cape; Ghandi’s funeral captured by Cartier-Bresson; the green-eyed Afghan girl portrayed in a Pakistani refugee camp by Steve McCurry; he Che Guevara smoking a cigar in Havana in 1963 in a photo by René Burri; or that of that solitary man who stood in front of a column of tanks in the Tiananmen Square protests.
In July 2022, De Middel from Alicante became the first Spaniard to head the agency. “I feel honored and also aware of the responsibility. I hope I can continue the great work that previous presidents have done and that I manage to bring new ideas and enthusiasm to the group,” she commented on Twitter at the time.
The Concord Award is the last of the eight international awards presented each year by the Princess of Asturias Foundation since 1980. In the previous edition, the Mary’s Meals Foundation, which fights against malnutrition in children in Africa, Asia, and America, received this distinction. Latin and the Caribbean. While in 2022 it fell to Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect who has dedicated half of his career to teaching how to build structures to house victims of natural disasters. In 2021, the winner was the NGO World Central Kitchen, by Spanish chef José Andrés, which feeds thousands of people around the world who have suffered the effects of a catastrophe.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
