“I’m too much of an artist to be a photojournalist, and I’m too much of a photojournalist to be an artist. “I’m stuck in the middle.” This is how photographer Cristina de Middel, president of the Magnum agency, who attended a masterclass for the 17th Luís Ksado Prize for Photographic Creation yesterday at the Ágora Center in A Coruña, describes herself. The artist, who won the National Photography Award in 2017, talks about his work, the press, the audience and why it is necessary to tell the events from a different perspective.
President of the Magnum agency. This is already a strong worldwide introduction letter. Photography.
Yes, Magnum has a very long history and is one of the oldest agencies on the market. It has survived despite all the changes in the industry. It’s been a pretty big responsibility for just a few years now. We must respect the entire legacy of the agency, as well as the talent it has always had to evolve and adapt to. There are always challenges and arguments and you always have to break the fabric a little bit.
How does the opportunity arise?
The president of Magnum, a cooperative, is elected by photographers who become members and vote for both new entrants and photographers who become president. It seemed to me that they elected me president the year I became a member. My imposter syndrome tells me it’s because no one wants to be that way. But I think maybe it’s because they recognize a little bit of the bridge profile that I have, they recognize my great respect for documentary because that’s where I grew up and at the end of the day, it’s what I do and documentary is also. The opening of the mind to new languages and new technologies does not happen in most cases when you are from the core part of photojournalism.
There have been many changes in photography. From black and white to color or analog to digital. What are the current challenges?
We need to take into account the trend of the press and the degradation of content. Since the emergence of digital platforms, all work has become much more superficial and much faster; This has made it very difficult to compete in any particular way with citizen journalism or with agencies that focus more on content and clickbait. Magnum has always been characterized by long-term operation. There is a deep connection with the subject, it is not just a matter of coming there for two days, taking photos and sending them within 24 hours. The challenge is to preserve some of the identity that gives the agency its personality within an ecosystem that is completely inadequate for it. We must look for formulas for this, whether through scholarships or patronage. You should never compromise on the long-term documentation that characterizes the agency. Another of the most obvious threats right now is Artificial Intelligence.
What effect does it have? Many people believed in the image of the Pope in his white anorak.
In this sense, I believe that Magnum has never been an agency based on speed, precisely because it has marked the author’s voice. If you want tomorrow’s photos, you can send them to AP or Reuters. We are in favor of much more detailed work and, in most cases, cooperation between author and photographer. So I believe Magnum is in a better position than other image bank agencies and other agencies where it’s really easy to replace one piece of content with another. What we do is not that easy to change because it depends on a photographer having an idea, bringing it to life and doing it from his own perspective. It’s not what the market needs. In fact, almost all of the projects carried out by Magnum photographers are completely out of the market and outside of the projects that will be published.
It’s not easy to get into Magnum, but there are three Spaniards in the agency and all three are women.
It’s no coincidence that three Spanish members in Magnum are women. Except Cristina [García]This has been going on for many years since I joined and the following year Lúa [Ribeira], members of a much more contemporary generation were concerned with maintaining a modicum of balance, and there were more and more women in Magnum because there were actually so few of them. This creates a bit of a snowball effect. Since there are more women in the agency, we are more open to the way women present projects, so their work is evaluated much better and is more accepted.
But are we still far from equality?
Yes, it is far away and I do not believe that equality will be achieved. Achieving equality in Magnum while not having it in society makes this a completely unrealistic goal. If men are mainly demanded in the market, we, as an agency, need to be able to offer the services demanded by the market. Our goal, of course, is to ensure that the market demands more women’s visions.
You managed to tackle the big issues of humanity, such as migration, war, sex work, without drama. How did you do this?
I believe drama is at the core of the topics I cover. The drama is actually experienced by the person in the photo. Neither me nor the person consuming it. What I have chosen, a choice that comes after years in the press because I have been a photojournalist for 10 years, is not to use guilt as a tool for empathy. We complain about how we have become insensitive, that the audience no longer has empathy, that on the next page you see a shipwreck in the Mediterranean as a shampoo commercial, and then you actually care about Shakira’s last song, but I don’t have to blame the Audience. It’s possible that we’re becoming desensitized, but the press and the way they tell us the stories are also partly to blame. They have been telling us from the same point of view for years, that is, they constantly say “look how bad this is”, but in fact, the responsibility of changing these things is not in the hands of the person reading the article. You can do absolutely nothing except vote every four years or every six years, depending on the country, and trust the person you vote for to do something. I try to regain interest and empathy through humor or admiration, not through guilt.
How do you enter the lives of the people you photograph to explain this?
The problem is that I don’t really get into the lives of the people I photograph. When I was in the press, I felt a little bad when I came for a story and said, “Hello gypsies, I’m here to save you because I’m going to take great pictures and it’ll change your life.” There came a time when I stopped believing that. I work more towards the audience: What the audience believes and thinks about gypsies, what the stereotypes and prejudices are, and these are my base of work.
He is currently exhibiting the exhibition Letters to the Director in Madrid. With this, he says that an important cycle in his career has closed. Because?
I left journalism in 2010, and I did so not out of anger, but because “these stories could be told better.” I gave myself a year off to see how I could do this. But I haven’t been back to the press since. Now that 13 years have passed, I feel like doing other things. I’m gradually moving towards video and even drawing. Even the photos I take are more about colors and composition.
Source: Informacion
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.