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Magnum as USSR—the article is abt USSR fall, but many parts are adaptable: "[I]n times of severe crisis, institutional elites face a decision point. Do they cling to the system that gives them power or recast themselves as visionaries who understand that the ship is sinking?" 1/ https://twitter.com/ForeignAffairs/status/1342434519979319297
"[Photojournalistic agencies] are good at recognizing the faults in other places and times, but they are terrible judges of the injustices built into their own foundations." 2/
"[G]reat [agencies]’ proclivity for self-delusion, self-isolation puts them at a partic disadvntg. They set themselves apart frm the world, learning little frm the accumulated [...] human experience. They imagine themselves immune to the ills affecting other places, systems." 3/
"[H]ow a great [photo agency] handles multiple internal crises—the faltering of the institutions of [internal] order, the craftiness of unmoored [photographers], the first tremors of systemic illegitimacy." 4/
"Powerful [agencies], as well as their [photographers], tend to be congenital conservatives when it comes to their own futures." — “Self-preservation is clearly the dominant drive.” 5/
"But in working systematically through the potential causes of the worst outcome imaginable, one might get smarter about the difficult, power-altering choices that need to be made now—those that will make politics more responsive to social change and one’s [agency]... --> 6/
--> ...more worthy of its time on the historical stage. The powerful aren’t accustomed to thinking this way." 7/7
