Todays Magnum In Motion Meeting

To give you a better insight into my work at Magnum Photos I am posting some photos of todays weekly meeting of the Magnum In Motion team.
Magnum In Motion is a department of Magnum Photos found about a year ago in New York City. The Magnum In Motion team is responsible for all kinds of New Media work within Magnum. Its focus lies on digital storytelling. To give you a good example of what our teams does you might want to take a look at the last online-feature Magnum In Motion did. It's a multimedia story with photographs and comments by Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths about Vietnam at Peace. It was published on the websites of "The New York Times" and the "International Herald Tribune". A really interesting and worthwhile experience.
Our team (in which I feel rather integrated already) works on more very, very interesting projects. Unfortunately I can, at this point, not give any details on them... The competitors could read this blog as well... :-)

The pictures above show our weekly meeting in which we discuss queued to do's for the week. The first picture shows Claudine Boeglin, Bjarke "BJ" Myrthu and another intern (well the back of him) Guillaume. We are holding this meetings in the backoffice area of the office which is also a nice place to sit down, drink a coffee or eat your lunch.
The folders which can be seen in the background contain some of the probably most interesting things in the office. All contact sheets of the photographers which belong to the New York City office of Magnum. Kind of a magical ressource.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:37 PM | Comments (9)

Dance Africa 2005 in Brooklyn

After my Memorial Day experience yesterday I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Victor, my host. He works at BAM and invited me to come over to see the closing ceremony of Dance Africa, America’s longest-running annual festival of dance, music, film, art, and culture from Africa and the African Diaspora.

I was really amazed when I arrived there. The whole place in front of the BAM and the streets around it have been closed for this purpose. A huge mass of people have been waiting to see the actors, the dancers and musicians of Dance Africa on the closed off place doing there performences on the street. On the surrounding streets was one huge street fair with food and clothes.
The light was wonderfull, enforcing all those rich colors of the African dresses. You could feel the good and peaceful spirits in the air, all sorts of people hanging out together, enjoying the rythms, the dances, food and drinks and the sun of course. A very nice and relaxed multicultural festival in the middle of Brooklyn! A huge contrast to my earlier Memorial Day experience.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 07:48 PM | Comments (9)

Memorial Day Service in Co-Op City

I started my day off by calling my girlfriend to wish her a happy birthday! We've been talking for a while and finally used our webcam for the first time. These services suck! Calling using Skype works pretty well. As soon as you want to use another service like Yahoo Mesenger to use a webcam as well everything gets a mess. But still funny to see the other one on a small window on your screen even if it's most of the time like a tableau.

I attended the Memorial Day Service in Co-Op's City veterans memorial park later. Memorial Day is a patriotic holiday in the United States. A day to honor and remember Americans who gave their lives while serving the U.S. in a war.
Kind of strange for me to see how people celebrate the fallen soldiers, to hear different kinds of hymns and battle songs, to hear speeches where people talk about their heros, about the brave men and women who serve their country. Speeches where they talk about freedom and democracy, where they state that freedom is not free...
Rather strange and way too much patriotism in my European eyes. But as far as things are not only black and white, as always there is another side as well.

I met Mrs. Carmen Raquel Natal at the Memorial service, an elderly woman living in Co-Op City. She was visibly touched by the ceremony. I started to talk to her and she told me that her grandson who can be seen on the photo standing together with his father and herself is in Iraq at the moment. Efraim Luis Natal is 23 years old. He has been in Iraq for one and a half years already, intermitted by one vacation at home. He got a two months old daughter he didn't yet see because she was born while he was away.
I guess it's hard to form an opinion about something like these patriotic acts as long as there are people like Mrs. Natal who have a beloved one in a war or who lost a family member there. Who knows how I'd act if I came into such a situation myself.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:51 PM | Comments (2)

Tasty and fresh - Fulton Fish Market Part II

Two more shots from my night at the Fulton Fish Market. See others and some information on the market in the previous post.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:36 PM | Comments (4)

Tasty and fresh - Fulton Fish Market Part I

I visited the Fulton Fish Market for the first time in June 2004 and now for the second time yesterday night. I like the atmosphere of fish markets so much, I like the smell (yes I do - as long as I can get rid of it later) and most of all I find the people who are working there so interesting. The way you can see how hard work over a lot of years left tracks in peoples faces, the way you get to hear shouts, laughs and sometimes offensice comments from one salesman to the other. It's interesting to see how trading is going on.

The Fulton Fish Market was opend on February 5th in 1822. Its final weeks broach in its 184th year of existance. The Fish Market on Fulton street, very close to the Brooklyn Bridge is to be moved to a new location at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. The move there was first scheduled for January, was then displaced to June and will now take place in September as Ziggy Galarza, a salesman at one of the many fish companies told me.

Even tough the Fulton Fish Market is most likely the oldest place in New York that's still doing the same thing as in its beginning, its told to be Americas largest Fish Market. More than 4.5 million pounds of fish moves through it each week.

Since I thought that the Fulton Fish Market would close in June I wanted to take the chance and go there one more time. So I left my apartment in the north east of the Bronx at about 01:30 in the morning, took the bus to Pelham Bay Park, went to 125th street where Markus Hartel, a German photographer living in New York, picked me up to