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Photography for social change

Can art go beyond itself? An exhibition at the Muscat Festival strived for global understanding

Photography is mostly a self-centred pursuit, where you pick up a camera and frame the world as you see it. Even if your subject is people, a finished photograph is generally more about the artist's treatment of them than it is about the subjects it portrays.

It is even more commendable then that a recently exhibited show at the Muscat Festival showcased a collection of photographs that strived for global change. NorthSouthEastWest was what its organiser The British Council called ‘a 360 degree view of climate change.’ Spanning ten climatic issues, 12 locations and ten photographers, the exhibit was interesting in its treatment – or rather use – of photography.

Not just art
Here, the photographs weren't the heroes, their message was. Indeed, you'd have to be particularly imaginative to call these images beautiful. Their in-your-face approach and framing lacked the usual artistic eye that the parent photo agency Magnum, whose photographers shot the exhibit, is usually known for. The problem with beautiful photographs is that the product becomes an end in itself, art for art's sake. Conversely, this might make it less of an art, if you believe that great art serves a purpose – for the greatest beauty of visual art might be the unspoken messages it can portray. If it doesn't carry a message you could argue that it is meaningless – and less of an art. Such debates revolve around what exactly art is, photographic or otherwise, and differ from person to person. One person's art is another's trash. The great thing about the recent exhibit is that such debates are secondary – the real issue here is climate change, not photographic composition.

This is no excuse for bad photographs, of course. The key to great photography isn't a black and white choice between arty visuals and boring portrayal. The photographs that really shine through history are those that excel at both, at the same time. Ironically, one of the greatest photo agencies in the world, Magnum, is both the creator of the current photos and the most memorable images of our time.

Don't fidget... get moving!
Magnum Photos grew out of the ashes of the Second World War, built by a handful of photographers who were scarred by the conflict, yet set free in a new world that lay open and was still largely photographically unexplored. They created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers – the idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define the agency, emphasising not only what is seen but also the way one sees it.

With Magnum was born the necessity for telling a story. Its photographers told each other: "Don't keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart... don't fidget. Get moving!"
"We often photograph events that are called 'news'," Henri Cartier-Bresson – Magnum's most famous founder – told Byron Dobell of Popular Photography magazine in 1957, "but some tell the news step by step in detail as if making an accountant's statement. Such news and magazine photographers, unfortunately, approach an event in a most pedestrian way. It's like reading the details of the Battle of Waterloo by some historian: so many guns were there, so many men were wounded – you read the account as if it were an itemisation. But on the other hand, if you read Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma, you're inside the battle and you live the small, significant details. Life isn't made of stories that you cut into slices like an apple pie. There's no standard way of approaching a story. We have to evoke a situation, a truth. This is the poetry of life's reality."

Are you good enough for Magnum?
Magnum Photos is a co-operative owned and run by its member photographers. The photographers meet once a year, during the last weekend in June, in New York, Paris or London, to discuss Magnum's affairs. One day at this meeting is set aside for considering and voting on potential new members' portfolios. Successful applicants will be invited to become a nominee member of Magnum, a category of membership which presents an opportunity for Magnum and the individual to get to know each other, but where there are no binding commitments on either side. In each of the last five years, between zero and four new nominees have been selected from among the many portfolios presented.

After two years of nominee membership, photographers then present another portfolio if they wish to apply for associate membership. If successful, the photographer then becomes bound by all the rules of the agency, and enjoys all the facilities of its offices and worldwide representation. The only difference between an associate member and a full member is that an associate member is not a director of the company and does not have voting rights in its corporate decision making. Finally, after another two years, an associate member wishing to apply for full membership presents a further portfolio of work for consideration by the members. Once elected as a full member, this effectively confers membership of Magnum for life or for as long as the photographer chooses. No member photographer of Magnum has ever been asked to leave.

Top of the food chain
In a world where print sales are falling and being an independent photographer is increasingly tough, getting into Magnum is the best you could possibly hope. for. As well as being the most respected photo agency in the world, it is also one of the safest places to sell your images. Magnum was founded by photographers who wished to work independently and to protect the copyright of its members' work. In 1947 when Magnum was founded, the norm for photographers was for the copyright to be held by clients. Since then much has changed, and the copyright laws around the world now offer statutory protection for the copyright of photographers' work, except where photographers have willingly agreed to part with the copyright to a client. Magnum remains highly protective of photographers' rights, and will not agree to undertake editorial assignment work where the client wishes to hold the copyright subsequently. Magnum remains at the forefront of the campaigns for photographers' rights generally, and is aggressive in pursuing circumstances where it perceives the copyright of its members' work has been breached and where it perceives the law has been broken.