A. D. Coleman on Photography and New Technology

The Dannin Papers

In June 2016 I published a Guest Post by Robert Dannin, Editorial Director of Magnum Photos from 1985-90. Dannin’s article contained so much compressed information, provocative insider insight, and tart critique that I invited him to become a regular contributor to this blog.

Welcome to the Party

“Magnum is a kind of party in the political, not the fun, sense, a bankrupt Communist party riddled with conspiracy, lack of resolve, cut-throat egotism, secrecy, character assassinations and rumor-mongering, teetering on the edge of collapse from inefficiency.”

Robert Dannin Interviewed by Russell Miller, 1995 -
(revised and expanded, 2016 — part 2)

Russell Miller: Did the Magnum photographers initially behave in a sensible fashion towards you, and towards the staff, or were they tremendously demanding on this stuff?

Robert Dannin: Different photographers behaved in different ways. There was no code of conduct. The staff were basically treated like shit, even the executives.

For example, Neil Burgess came in to open up the London office, and somewhere along the line was led to believe that if he played things right, he could eventually become a member of Magnum. Erich Hartmann, on the other hand, had been very straight with me, “You’ll never ever be part of the club.” They suckered Neil, and he went along with it for a while until he figured out that it wasn’t going to happen. I knew where I stood with them from the beginning; it was always clear.

Robert Dannin Interviewed by Russell Miller, 1995
(revised and expanded, 2016 — part 3)

Robert Dannin: (continued) … A year later the same thing happened with UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]. Sebastião Salgado and I went to the 1988 opening-night General Assembly cocktail party. With the architecture, East River views, and a crowd of multicultural elites, it was a lavish, spacey affair.

Robert Dannin Interviewed by Russell Miller, 1995
(revised and expanded, 2016 — part 4)

Russell Miller: How long did it take you to start raising an eyebrow over this organization?

Robert Dannin: I began to understand better during certain crises — not inside the agency, but political crises I wanted to cover. That was the test. Baby Doc finally fell in February 1986, and I had to beg people to go to Haiti. [Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” was the President of Haiti from 1971-86, ousted in a popular uprising. — A. D. C.] We ended up with three photographers, and on top of that I had to literally pay a guy out of my own pocket, sending him down to mind Danny Lyon.

Robert Dannin Interviewed by Russell Miller, 1995
(revised and expanded, 2016 — part 5)

Robert Dannin: (continued) … Magnum can do an awful lot with very little because they can reinforce the cachet. Themes and motifs are repeated and recycled until even the critics forget who originated them. Pictures and books by Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Danny Lyon, Eugene Richards, and Gilles Peress all rehearse these tropes.

Robert Dannin Interviewed by Russell Miller, 1995
(revised and expanded, 2016 — part 6)

Robert Dannin: (continued) … By contrast with Sygma, Magnum was more like a Classic Oldies collection. Cartier-Bresson and Capa. Eve Arnold’s take of Marilyn Monroe, Dennis Stock’s super-famous James Dean pictures had comparable revenues, but they were already “contributing” photographers, meaning a reduced percentage split with the agency.

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (a)

The Collins Day in the Life of … series of books was the first spectacular disruption aimed at transforming professional photographers into undervalued content providers, the unfortunate state of affairs that today confronts those wishing to make a career of making images.

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (b)

… By early 1986 I had been Magnum’s editorial director for almost a year when Rick Smolan and his co-conspirator David Cohen, a former employee at Contact Press Images, began inviting photographers to participate in the Day in the Life of America book project. It was going to be their biggest effort yet, covering the entire country with an expanded team of photographers, plus more editors, and sponsorship by the Fortune 500 companies: Eastman Kodak, Nikon, Northwest Airlines, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, Pan American Airways, Apple, and Hertz.

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (c)

… Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images made innumerable appeals to his friends at Magnum, but was unable to convince anyone else to sign on for A Day in the Life of America. Pledge believes he can talk a snail out of its shell, so this resistance drove him crazy.

He wouldn’t quit. When Magnum members tired of his relentless campaigning and decided to call their non-participation a boycott he went into overdrive ….

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (d)

… As the Day in the Life of America project drew to a close, planning was already underway to reproduce the DITLO experiment in the USSR and China. Predictably, the proposal for the 1987 Day in the Life of the Soviet Union lured photographers with promises of easy access and editorial candor. Citing the last Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (openness), the DITLO entrepreneurs Rick Smolan and David Cohen averred,

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (e)

… Back in Paris, a Magnum newcomer, nominee Patrick Zachmann, portrayed himself as a Sinologist and made common cause with François Hebel, director of the agency’s Paris bureau, as soon as the Day in the Life of the China prospectus arrived. The devil’s bargain Zachmann endorsed: Access was everything; either you cooperated with power or you would never get inside. Think of all the opportunities surrendered to other photographers if you forfeited this offer. Time was running out. That free ticket and easy visa might go to another photographer.

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (f)

… A Day in the Life of China was published with a disclaimer attesting to a split between Collins, the publisher, and the mainland Chinese government-front organizations.

Lest one mistake a dispute over the two controversial pictures as heroic opposition to the forces of repression, the entire book is a broad sop to press censorship. It reflects the same mechanical layout of predictable landscapes and anodyne street photography of the preceding books. Interpretive desiderata are wholly absent.

The Assassination of Photography:
The Plot to Hack Reality (g)

… Both Rick Smolan’s Photo-One Network and his Day in the Life projects aimed to disrupt photojournalism. On the one hand, Photo-One — a pre-internet digital bulletin board for photographers and picture editors — might be classified as an embryonic, digital hack targeting the agency model.[1] As a potentially cheap and accessible platform for professionals and amateurs alike, it sought to undermine the existing economics of photojournalism, those based on the bargaining power of agents as middlemen in the production and distribution of pictures. Although well-conceived, it was ahead of its time, and failed due to a lag in the field of electronic communications.