Corporate News Pictures at Magnum Photos

The RIT Visual Culture, Arts, and Media Lecture Series presents Nadya Bair, Assistant Professor of Visual Culture and Digital Humanities at Hamilton College, talking about her recent book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market. The talk examines one of the least-known chapters in Magnum’s early history: the agency’s public relations and advertising photography. Shot for American corporations eager to associate with Magnum’s itinerant photojournalists and the agency’s “humanist” aesthetic, these assignments are invaluable for understanding both the business of freelancing and the inseparability between editorial and corporate photography. She draws on extensive archival research to unravel the mythologies surrounding the legendary Magnum Photos agency. Bair reframes photojournalism as a collaborative profession while showing how news pictures became integral to postwar visual culture.