"Lagos, young Nigerian boys amusing themselves in
"magic mirrors" at a Fair during Independence celebrations."

Taken by Marilyn Silverstone in 1960, this photograph is one of the many owned by Magnum Photos, a prestigious and historically important photographic co-operative.

Two years after the apocalypse that was called the Second World War ended Magnum Photos was founded. The world's most prestigious photographic agency was formed by four photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David "Chim" Seymour - who had been very much scarred by that conflict and were motivated both by a sense of relief that the world had somehow survived and the curiosity to see what was still there. They created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as people and photographers, the idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define Magnum, emphasizing not only what is seen but also the way one sees it.

"Back in France, I was completely lost," legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson explained in an interview with Hervé Guibert in Le Monde.

"At the time of the liberation, the world having been disconnected, people had a new curiosity. I had a little bit of money from my family, which allowed me to avoid working in a bank. I had been engaged in looking for the photo for itself, a little like one does with a poem. With Magnum was born the necessity for telling a story. Capa said to me: 'Don't keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart, my dear. Don't fidget. Get moving!' This advice enlarged my field of vision."