In May 2011, five Magnum photographers and one writer hopped on an R.V. at the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, and launched a two-week road trip from Texas to California.
1,750 miles and thousands of photographs later, the result of the "Postcards From America" road trip is a limited-edition book that was released this week. The book is actually a collection of 18 items enclosed in a box signed by the itinerant photographers -- Paolo Pellegrin, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, Mikhael Subotzky -- and writer Ginger Strand: a book, five bumper stickers, a newspaper, two fold-outs, three cards, a poster, and five zines. According to the "Postcards from America" Tumblr, these items "combine to represent the idiosyncratically American character that defines this project."
More information and pictures from the book are available on the "Postcards From America" website.
A selection of prints from the road trip will be added to the Magnum Photos collection, housed at the Center. The Ransom Center is pleased to participate in this documentary event, an outgrowth of the Center's relationship with the Magnum Photos collective. In 2010 the Ransom Center joined in partnership with Magnum Photos and MSD Capital, LP to house 200,000 original press prints from Magnum's New York bureau. The Ransom Center has since created a preliminary inventory and opened the collection for research to students, faculty, and the general public. The Ransom Center continues to work with Magnum, including the Magnum Foundation, to add further research value to the collection.
"The Ransom Center was the perfect place for us to start this trip," said photographer Susan Meiselas, President of the Magnum Cultural Foundation. "Our picture distribution system, represented by the New York press print library that's now housed at the Center, was part of the glue that historically held us together as a collective. In a post-analog age, we're exploring new ways of being together collectively, and this trip was one of those experiments. We really saw how the Ransom Center could be a bridge between the old and the new. I hope we'll keep doing more new projects together because I really believe in the importance of linking the archival materials to a living body of new production carried out with the same relentlessly curious spirit."
Watch photographer Alec Soth lead a video introduction to the box set.
In the coming weeks, stay tuned for a follow-up blog post featuring a selection of prints from the road trip that will be added to the Magnum Photos collection at the Ransom Center.
Elana Estrin is a features writer at the Harry Ransom Center. This piece first ran on the Ransom Center's blog, Cultural Compass.