How did the Magnum Generation(s) project come about?

We’d had the idea of recounting the birth of the agency for a long time, but the project required an enormous amount of knowledge and documentation. It took me much longer to complete than expected, not least because of the sheer volume of sources I had to cross-reference. In addition to the documentation available in France, I needed to refer to American, English, Spanish, Italian and German books…

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Why is it important to tell the story of Magnum’s creation today?

The answer to this question lies in the very title of the comic: “Generation(s)”. We’re talking about the first generation of Magnum photographers, of course, but also about all those who followed, the war reporters who have forged our knowledge of the world over the years. In this respect, it could be said that we ourselves, collectively, are the Magnum generation. The twentieth century began with the First World War, but our contemporary issues stem directly from the rise of fascism in Europe, which led to the Spanish Civil War, itself a major live-fire rehearsal for the Second World War. Yet it was precisely during this war that Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gerda Taro, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour made their great debuts.

What was the involvement of the Magnum agency and its members in this project?

It was total: it would have been impossible to produce this story without them, especially as we integrated photographs into the comic book narrative. Both the Magnum documentation database and the Magnum teams in Paris, London and New York were indispensable to the day-to-day work on the book.

Why did you choose to tell the story of the agency through the eyes of its founders?

Only the spirit of the founders can help us understand what Magnum Photos is today. Originally, this cooperative of photographers did everything it could to free themselves from the newspapers that exploited them. Before Magnum Photos, photographers were paid to go to the locations chosen by the editors. Their photos were selected, cropped, cut out and sometimes even turned around by the newspapers, and the war reporters had no say in the final result. Captions were too often different from what they had seen in the field. These photographers decided to free themselves from the diktats of the editorial offices, and it is in this spirit that the photographers who followed them worked and still work today.

Capa plays a central role in the story, along with Gerda. Although she was also a great photographer, she is not historically considered a founder…

The founders of Magnum do not include Gerda Taro, simply because she died in 1937, and the agency was founded in 1947, but it was with her that Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Chim began to develop the concept of an agency created and run by photographers. We can’t rewrite history, but it’s likely that without Gerda Taro, things would have been different. Starting with the fact that, without her, Robert Capa would not have been called Robert Capa. She was a strategic thinker.

What role does this album play in the history and memory work you’ve been doing over the past few years on this pivotal period between the two world wars, the Second World War and the immediate post-war period?

A central place, since it’s a time of information versus propaganda. At a time without television or the Internet, photojournalists were the only visual witnesses to the state of the world. They sought the truth at source, taking all the risks, with the aim of circulating it throughout the world: and it worked! In the case of Madeleine Riffaud, Madeleine, Résistante, a series I’m scripting for Éditions Dupuis. We learn that it was when young Madeleine saw Robert Capa and Gerda Taro’s photos in the press that she became aware of what war was, and in particular the Spanish War. And that she would have to fight Nazism, which was on the rise. This had a major influence on her commitment to the Resistance, and on her character in general, which remains unchanged today at 98. When I said at the outset that we were all of the Magnum generation…

Why the focus on this period?

It’s a bit of a cliché, but you can’t understand the present if you don’t know much about history. For me, it’s a way of understanding the world I live in, and making a comic strip is the easiest way to reflect on a subject, because I can dissect it by making a story out of it. But that’s not enough: in Irena, Madeleine, Simone, as in my other albums, I try to make the characters live in their own time. I tell a story through their experiences and emotions. I don’t want readers to feel they’re reading a didactic book. And yet, when they close the comic, they’ve learned a lot. My job is to take an enormous mass of complex information and present it in a simple, accessible and clear way, opening the reader up to other books or media on the same subject, if he or she so wishes.

Jean-David Morvan, scriptwriter