Sophie Wright is an advisor to Contact Editions. She is the Cultural and Print Room Director at Magnum Photos London and a freelance Creative Consultant and has over 10 years experience in the photographic industry. Here Sophie discusses her role at Magnum, her views on the current photographic market and shares advice with those starting out in the photographic industry.
You seem like you’re extremely busy at the moment Sophie, what exciting projects have you got on the horizon?
We’re always busy at Magnum! Currently we’re working on our next Print Room exhibition called Political Landscapes, an exploration of the rise of issue-based landscape as a genre within the membership. I’m also negotiating an exhibition of historical material for Qatar next year, as well as investigating other potential collaborations in Saudi and Dubai. There are also 2 big books currently in the pipeline, one on contact sheets with Thames & Hudson, and a collaboration with WWF, both due for publication in 2011. My colleagues in Cultural are also currently organising a Magnum workshop in Barcelona and we’ve also got various individual photographer projects in development – so it’s hectic to say the least.
In terms of my freelance work, I’m currently concentrating on getting my own website up and running, and have a couple of interesting collaborations up my sleeve.
Obviously at Magnum you are very involved in a lot of high profile exhibitions and publications. Could you talk about the various ways that photographers fund their personal work and how you see this moving?
When you talk about “projects” at Magnum it’s probably best to think about the photographers personal work as that is probably of most interest for photographers starting out on something. Magnum’s offices represent the photographers in lots of ways – commercial, editorial, stock sales as well as the areas that I oversee in the cultural department: through exhibitions, books and print sales. The photographers get commissions from clients across all these areas of activity, and sometimes work that was once commissioned becomes something larger for a photographer that they choose to focus on for a longer period of time themselves. The structure of Magnum is also set up so that any reselling of archival material or stock, as it’s known now, is supposed to feed into funds for photographers to pursue their independent projects. As Magnum is set up on a business model, we don’t get public sector funding, so if a photographer has a specific project they need assistance with they and Magnum look for sponsorship or funding from interested parties, be they commercial or charitable bodies. Finally, print sales is obviously an important source of revenue for many of our members.
Have you noticed shifts in the print sales market recently? What do you feel are the significant changes?
Print sales at Magnum has been a big growth area over the past few years. Magnum London opened our Print Room in 2005 and have also collaborated very successfully with the Atlas gallery since then on UK sales. In addition, we have various partner galleries overseas that we consign material to. There are also successful print sales businesses running out of our New York and Paris offices.
Magnum’s newer members are increasingly coming to the agency with pre-existing gallery relationships, this is both a reflection of Magnum’s broadening representation of documentary work, and the shift in the markets for this kind of photography. Magnum will always have enthusiasts for it’s work who come to us not because they are collectors but because of their love of the images and that hasn’t changed. It’s the bigger collectors who are now taking more time to consider their next purchase. Sales have obviously slowed down a bit since the recession hit last Autumn, with the recent auctions during Frieze still tentative, but I’m confident they will pick up again.
You’ve worked on a lot of amazing exhibitions and publications during your career so far. If you had to pick, which would you say you were most proud of?
It’s hard to choose retrospectively, although in terms of first’s at Magnum I guess working on the first Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition in the Middle East, which we held at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi earlier in the year was pretty interesting. I’m actually really excited at the potential for the Magnum Contacts project, which we originated through London, and on a smaller scale, I’ve got a lot of fun out of curating our print room exhibitions – shows like New Blood, Documenting Style or our new Political Landscapes show we’ve got coming up. In terms of my freelance work, I get a lot of pleasure from writing and enjoyed reviewing Jim Goldberg’s new project Open See for Foam magazine earlier in the year.
At lot of new graduates find it very difficult to break into the industry, which can often seem very cliquey. Would you say there was a point at which you got a break? What was it?
I will always remember being told by the then Chairman at Tate, who a contact of mine had very kindly set me up to meet when I was young and relatively green, that “getting a job in the art world is like hitting your head against a brick wall until a brick falls off”. Clearly I must have been a masochist because there was no specific break as such, just as with everything else, a determination not to give up until I got somewhere. You should also never underestimate the benefit of mentors – I’ve had some good advice from people I admire over the years. It’s important to have people further down their careers that you can both talk to and aspire to be like as it’s a long game in this industry and one based on tenacity and a good network of supporters and clients.
Writers and curators can often be overlooked in photography, where the photographer is often placed on a pedestal as auteur. Can you recommend some exciting writers and curators for us to check out? Photography is an individualistic occupation however, it’s a fallacy to think that you’ll get anywhere without the help or collaboration of others. Writers and curators make up some of those advocates. It’s a very exciting time in London at the moment, as we’ve got Charlotte Cotton back in the UK from LACMA heading up the satellite space of the National Media Museum in London, in addition to a very nice chap called Simon Baker, who is the first photography curator hired by the Tate, so it feels like the possibilities for photography in London are developing. I’m a big fan of the work that David Chandler does at Photoworks in Brighton, and further afield we’re currently working with Kristen Lubben at ICP on the Magnum Contacts book, who produced a really great exhibition and book “In History” on Susan Meiselas’s work last year. In terms of writers David Campany and Geoff Dyer are also worth checking out.