Magnum Photos, established in April 1947, summoned "concerned" photojournalists to unite in defense of free expression and individual copyright in an era of nascent magazine conglomerates who demanded total ownership of their correspondents' pictures. Steeped in the euphoria of Europe's liberation from wartime terror, the founders of Magnum envisioned a cooperative venture that would guarantee a truly independent media. It was this dream, tethered to the political foundations of social democracy, which brought together founders Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, Robert Capa, and David Seymour (Chim). More than fifty years later, the calling of Magnum's peer-selected members has not changed. They continue the struggle to represent history through the lens of personal experience, competing against all odds in an age of predatory media giants. Robert Dannin has edited the work of photojournalists for twenty-five years. As the editorial director of Magnum from 1985 to 1990, he produced Sebastiao Salgado Jr.'s "An Archaelogy of the Industrial age, " eventually published as Workers (Aperture). He was also the text editor for Jame Nactwey's Inferno (Phaidon). Dannin now teaches urban anthropology at New York University and recently published Black Pilgrimage to Islam (Oxford University Press).