Photographic Archivist Mary Alice Harper works with the Magnum Photos Collection. Photo by Linda Briscoe Myers.

As is the case with any incoming collection, the Magnum Photos collection came with its own unique set of challenges. Ransom Center Curator of Photography David Coleman and I have worked to develop and implement a strategy for making the collection accessible to researchers in a timely and organized manner.

Creating the preliminary inventory
The agreement between MSD Capital, the owner of the collection, and the Ransom Center places the Magnum collection at the Center for at least five years and stipulates the photographs be made available. Desiring to open the collection as quickly as possible, the curator and I devised a two-phase approach for cataloging it.

The…

The Magnum collection at the Harry Ransom Center, with Alex Webb’s GRENADA. Gouayave. Bar. 1979 in foreground (©Alex Webb/Magnum Photos).

The Magnum Photos collection, comprising more than 1,300 boxes of photographic materials, is now open to researchers, students and the public at the Ransom Center.

Dating from the 1930s to 2004, the bulk of the 210,000 photographs from Magnum Photos’ New York bureau are gelatin silver prints, though the collection also contains some color prints.

An inventory of the collection can be found online.

In February, MSD Capital L.P., Magnum Photos and the Ransom Center announced that the collection would reside at the Ransom Center pursuant to an agreement with its new owner, an affiliate of MSD Capital, which had recently acquired the prints from…