In 1947, a group of photographers founded a cooperative in Paris. Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger were among them. They called it Magnum Photos.
The idea was simple and a bit radical for the time. The photographers would own their own work. They’d keep their negatives and their copyright, choose their own assignments, and decide how their images got used. Magazines could license the pictures, but they couldn’t own them.
Why that mattered
Before that, a photographer on assignment usually handed everything to the publication. The picture belonged to the magazine, and the photographer moved on to the next job. Under the cooperative model, a photo could earn money for decades and be sold to many buyers.
It also changed the work itself. When you own the archive you can afford to shoot a long personal project that no editor asked for, because you know the pictures will still be yours in ten years.
Still relevant
Today’s photographers deal with the same questions on new platforms. Who owns the image? Who can license it? Who gets paid when it’s reused a million times?
Magnum’s answer was to keep the rights with the person who pressed the shutter. It still sounds sensible.