The magic of the Magnum mark

Every picture tells a story, but what about the picture's other story - that of the image as object?

The Magnum Mark, currently on show at the Magnum Print Room in London (following it's run at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York) seeks to explore the processes of manual image dissemination through the medium of Magnum's peerless print archive  - until the widespread use of digital photography the very heart of the organisation's business. 

Included in the exhibition are darkroom 'print maps' - rule books showing how a particular image should be printed, contact sheets from the series which yielded some of the agency's most iconic images, and a recreation of one of Magnum‟s original 'distribution sets' by Magnum founder George Rodger for his story on the Nuba tribe of Kordofan, Sudan, together with copies of the magazines in which the work was first shown.

But within these exhibits perhaps most interesting are the marks and annotations on the reverse of the images, offering clues as to where the print has physically gone, as well as where it might have been reproduced. 

Follow the link to the blog of Wayne Ford, former Art director of The Observer Magazine, for more discoveries from the Magnum archive