MADRID (AP) — With almost eight decades of history behind it, the international photography agency Magnum Photos was recognized on Wednesday with the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord “for its iconic and demanding work of photojournalism,” the jury indicated.
Created in 1947 by Robert Capa, Magnum Photos materialized his idea of a journalistic photography agency that functioned as a cooperative and in which its members had total independence to retain the rights to their works and be able to market them. Its four founding partners — Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour — are considered the fathers of photojournalism.
For the jury, the agency is “an example of press freedom and risk-taking, it has guarded and transmitted the testimony of the most relevant events of its time and thereby contributed, through the image, to raising awareness of the humanity”, according to his minutes.
In the Magnum Photos archives, which have more than a million entries, are the only existing photographs of the Normandy landings, taken by Capa; from Malcolm X’s speeches, made by Eve Arnold, or from Fidel Castro’s entry into Havana in 1959, captured by Burt Glinn.
This year’s list of winners includes the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture in the International Cooperation category, the Romanian poet Ana Blandiana (Letters), the singer and composer Joan Manuel Serrat (Arts), the French-Iranian cartoonist and film director Marjane Satrapi (Communication and Humanities). In addition, the badminton player Carolina Marín will receive the Sports award, the Canadian academic and essayist Michael Ignatieff the Social Sciences award, and the scientists Daniel J. Drucker, Jeffrey M. Friedman, Joel F. Habener, Jens Juul Holst and Svetlana Mojsov will share that of Scientific and Technical Research.
The award, which has a financial prize of 50,000 euros ($53,000), is the last of eight awarded annually by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, which are presented at the end of October in a ceremony in Oviedo, in northern Spain.
