Historic Photo Archives Now Call Ransom Center Home

One of the most important photography archives of the 20th century now resides at the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center.

The Magnum photo agency, operated cooperatively by its members for more than half a century, held nearly 200,000 original press prints by some of the world's best-known photographers. Now for the first time, those photos have left the agency's New York headquarters with a new owner and a new home.

The Ransom Center will preserve, catalog, and exhibit the photos, which include images from the Spanish Civil War, the D-Day landings and the Six-Day War, as well as historic scenes from the Civil Rights movement.

Michael Dell led the way for the purchase through his private investment firm, MSD Capital. Dell and partners John Phelan and Glenn Fuhrman bought the physical press prints, which were made to circulate to magazines and newspapers, while Magnum's member photographers will retain the copyright and licensing rights to all of the images in the Collection.

Under the purchase agreement, the Ransom Center will house the prints for at least the next five years.

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By Jeff Beckham in News on February 3, 2010 11:30 AM 0 Comments

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b

for those (like me) who have always been enchanted by this photo, you might be interested to read this:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

causal observer

A solid point, Todd. Readers may also want to take a look at the Tower Blog, in which President Powers discusses the orders from Governor Perry to reduce the University's budget. All the while the news reports bemoan the mandatory tuition increases over the next two semesters while barely mentioning a word about the bloated sports budget. Which is not to say that UT shouldn't spend plenty on sports -- it's just a skewing of priorities that is really disingenuous and leads to talking out both sides of your mouth.

At any rate, this photo archive is awesome, and yet another example of how the Harry Ransom Center and other organizations within UT help to make the school a world-class institution.

toddal

This is totally cool and awesome and I'm very glad that UT is the go to repository for these kinds of archives. But my question is...why can we always find money for this but can't find $122k to keep the Cactus Cafe and Informal Classes going??

I mean if you note the decision to close them down the "Powers" that be say that it's because of low student involvement. But I would ask you...how many current students are going to be involved with this archive? Not many. It will be 90% outside researchers and photo/history buffs I have no doubt. So why aren't the same rules applied here as with Cactus/Informal? "If it doesn't directly benefit current students then its on the budgetary chopping block." Hmmmm....doesn't seem to be the case as long as it brings the administration some clout and recognition. A sad and disappointing commentary on my beloved university. :-(