Michael Dell snaps up Magnum photo archive

Michael Dell's investment tentacle, MSD Capital LP, has acquired the Magnum Photos agency's extensive print archive for an undisclosed sum, Bloomberg reports.

The deal secures around 185,000 images representing the work of 103 photographers between the 1930s to 1998. The archive will reside for five years in the Harry Ransom Center, a humanties research centre at the University of Texas at Austin.

Texas Uni drop-out Dell enthused: "Having this incredible collection in Austin is especially exciting to me."

MSD co-managing partner, Glenn R. Fuhrman, said: “Given the technical changes that have taken place in the world of photography, including the digitization of images, a collection of prints like these will never exist again."

Magnum was founded as a member-owned co-operative in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour. Since then, top photographic talents such as Abbas, Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas and Martin Parr have passed through its doors.

Dell's acquisition includes "Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 1932 shot of a man leaping over a puddle near the Gare Saint- Lazare in Paris, Bob Adelman’s 1963 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the climax of his 'I Have a Dream Speech', and Dennis Stock’s 1955 portrait of James Dean walking in a deserted, rainy Times Square", Bloomberg notes. ®