Magnum Photos and ARTstor announce an exciting collaboration to bring the world’s most renowned photographs to the educational community. Beginning this spring, Magnum will launch 80,000 high-quality photographs within the ARTstor Digital Library to share images of major events and personalities from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam to the present day for scholarly purposes. Mark Lubell, Managing Director of Magnum’s New York office, says of the collaboration, "The ARTstor Digital Library is a wonderful way of providing students and the academic community with access to a selection of Magnum’s iconic photographs."

Magnum Photos International, Inc., is entirely owned by its 80 prominent photographer-members. Magnum’s roster of photographers includes Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Elliott Erwitt, Josef Koudelka, Rene Burri, Hiroji Kubota, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Alex Webb and dozens of others. With powerful individual vision, these photographers have chronicled an astounding range of subjects — industry, society and people, places of interest, politics and news events, disasters and conflict — for award-winning publications such as Life, Paris Match, and Picture Post. “We are thrilled to be working with what most people recognize to be the most extraordinary group of documentary photographers in the world.” James Shulman, Executive Director of ARTstor said. "Accessing 80,000 Magnum images via ARTstor will be a great breakthrough not only for art historians, but for social scientists, humanists, or really anyone in academia who wants to access these stunning images in their teaching and research, on topics from Afghanistan to soccer, from Soweto to glaciers, from Dr. King to Beacon Hill."

The world's most prestigious photographic agency, Magnum Photos was formed by four photographers: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour in 1947, two years after WWII. They created Magnum to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers — an idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define Magnum, emphasizing not only what is seen but also the way one sees it. They believed photographers had to have a point of view in their imagery that transcended any formulaic recording of contemporary events

Through its four editorial offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, and a network of sub-agents, Magnum Photos provides photographs to the press, publishers, advertising, television, galleries and museums across the world. "Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually," said Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The inclusion of the Magnum collection in ARTstor will impact the next generation of artists, photographers, historians, politicians, writers, journalists, and others who will teach and study these images through the ARTstor website library and presentation tools. ARTstor, a nonprofit organization, is dedicated to furthering the use of digital images in the arts, architecture, and humanities for non-commercial, educational purposes.