Magnum Images has launched into an bold challenge to digitize its intensive Paris colour library archive, unlocking a treasure trove of unseen photos spanning from the Nineteen Fifties to the early 2000s.
Teaming up with Fujifilm and MPP (Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie – Heritage and Images Library of Paris), this initiative is about to breathe new life into a set of roughly 650,000 colour slides, lots of which have remained untouched for many years.
On the coronary heart of this digitization effort is the Fujifilm GFX 100 II medium format digital digital camera. It’s an attention-grabbing alternative, contemplating specialist techniques from the likes of Section One are sometimes the go-to for archival digitization resulting from their excessive decision and optical superiority. However Magnum’s choice to make use of the GFX speaks to its outstanding versatility.
Sometimes favored for portraiture, documentary work, and now even wildlife pictures, the GFX is now proving itself to be a strong software for preserving photographic historical past.
Pierre Mohamed-Petit, Magnum’s digital manufacturing supervisor, highlights the importance of the challenge. “I’m hoping to see and rediscover iconic moments of historical past that made Magnum what Magnum is understood for all over the world”.
In a newly launched video, embedded under, the staff states how colour pictures reveals particulars that black-and-white merely can not. The footage additionally reveals us that Magnum is utilizing the Fujinon GF 63mm lens and an extended telephoto (presumably the GF 250mm), decisions that counsel a steadiness between sharpness and pure rendering.
Fujifilm’s involvement goes past simply supplying the gear, nevertheless. “This new collaborative sequence with Magnum Images is essential to our mission,” says Kunio Aoyama, basic supervisor of Fujifilm Europe.
“By utilizing our GFX expertise to digitize Magnum’s colour library archive, we really feel that we’re serving to to document a second of historical past earlier than it’s misplaced – each the historical past of the international locations we shall be visiting with our Fujikina international occasions and the historical past of pictures itself”.
ABOVE: Watch the Magnum Presents: A World in Coloration video
Categorized by nation, theme, and persona, the archive serves as a time capsule from the period when the press was transitioning into colour pictures. The aim isn’t simply preservation, it’s about making these photos accessible to the general public by way of month-to-month releases, beginning with Czechia.
The primary choice, unveiled on March 17, spotlights key moments within the nation’s historical past, together with the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. These colour photos will complement the well-known black-and-white work of photographers like Josef Koudelka, providing another perspective on these historic occasions.
From March 22–23, Magnum travels to Prague for the newest Fujikina, marking the start of a sequence of European showcases. Alongside the digitization, Magnum and Fujifilm are collaborating on these Fujikina occasions, which can characteristic newly uncovered archive photos alongside unique slide sheets. They’ll additionally embody a recent response by a Magnum photographer who will create a brand new sequence of ten photos utilizing the newest GFX digital camera, impressed by the archive.
“We will bridge the previous and the brand new, the place you get new concepts and the motivation to create one thing new,” one of many Magnum staff members says within the video.
With new photos rolling out every month and an increasing focus that may quickly embody america, this initiative is greater than only a digitization effort. It’s a reinvigoration of Magnum’s legacy in colour and with Fujifilm’s GFX system on the helm, it’s proving that high-resolution medium format cameras might be simply as very important in preserving historical past as they’re in capturing it at present.
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