After our first two live interviews with Bruce Gilden and Larry Towell on Twitter we have yet another exciting Twitterview coming up on Monday. Peter van Agtmael agreed to stop by the Magnum New York office on Monday to chat with you and answer your questions. The time for the Question & Answer session is 12pm EDT.

This time around we introduce a fancy new feature to these live chats with our photographers. You'll be able to ask your questions via Twitter and receive your answers via Twitter. Business as usual... But what about people who do not use Twitter? Are they left out? Not any longer!

The Twitterview will be broadcasted live and direct on the Magnum Blog too. As soon as the live session starts questions and answers from Twitter will show up in a special chat window on the blog in real time. Blog users can ask their questions by typing them into a text field and Peter will reply to them directly as well. Start preparing your questions! You can see the chat area that we prepared after clicking the continue reading link.

I have to apologize, when posting the announcement about our live Question & Answer session with Larry Towell on Twitter I actually posted the wrong date. The Twitterview was yesterday and not today. I'll make sure to announce the right date the next time around. In the meantime here is the transcript of the conversation with Larry.

For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based post of up to 140 characters.
Basically it's a communication tool that gets more and more popular. Live Question & Answers with Magnum photographers on Twitter allow you to ask precise and short questions and get answers right away. The @ sign signals a reply to that user.

@magnumphotos Hi Larry - is there anything about being associated with Magnum that you feel negatively about?
@michaelbel In life in general it's hard to be in cooperative where everyone has equal say and share, it's a creative tension.

@magnumphotos Hi! you always take field recordings when you travel-how important do you think it is for photographers to embrace multimedia?
@thefrook In this day and age it's critical if you want to participate in the issues of our day online, I also find it liberating

@magnumphotos what inpired you to become a photographer and which have been the influences in your life?
@AdrianArias The subjects have been my influences , what inspired me was first person experience in Central America in the '80s

@magnumphotos what is documentary photography for you?
@AdrianArias It's my own engagement with the people and places I place myself as a freelancer

From Jörg Colberg's blog Conscientious:

Jörg Colberg: I don't know whether one would have the same impression living in South Africa, but looking from the outside - and from far away - it seems like South Africa had such a bright moment of hope when apartheid was dismantled and when Nelson Mandela was elected President, and so much has gone wrong since then, for whatever reason. Do you see it as your responsibility (if that's a word you'd be comfortable with) to record what's going on? To preserve this moment in time, maybe to foster some awareness and change?

Mikhael Subotzky: I am not sure if I believe that photographers can effectively take responsibility for such things. I do believe in the power of bearing witness, but I see it more as responsibility to ourselves - that we each have a responsibility to try and make ourselves as conscious as possible. Looking at the world around me through photography has become my way of doing that. While I am very happy that I can share images with others and try and show them things that they haven't taken in, that isn't the primary motivation for doing what I do.

» Read the complete interview over on Conscientious.

The current issue of the excellent FOAM Magazine is also focused on youth. From over 300 submitted portfolios, the editors chose 12 portfolios from photographers age 35 or under (Magnum's Jacob Aue Sobol among them).

Fortunately the entire issue of FOAM isn't limited to young voices. There is an entertaining interview by Sarah Baxter of two Magnum photographers: Thomas Dworzak (36) and Elliott Erwitt (80). This interview adds some depth to the original post on advice for photographers:

Sarah Baxter: Let's start with the obvious: the generation gap.
Elliott Erwitt: I'm older than he is! (laughs) I was born in 1928, in Neuilly, France, but I left when I was two months old, so I don't have much influence from France. I'm an American.
Thomas Dworzak: I was born in 1972 in Kötzting, a small town in Germany. And I lived in Cham, a really small town, for 18 years, always wanting to leave…
SB: When did you decide to become a photographer, how did it happen?
EE: I was on my own from when I was fifteen and a half. And I had to do something to make money, so I took pictures. This was in Hollywood, where I lived. I took pictures of school events, children, neighbors. That sort of thing. That's how I started. It seemed like a good way to be independent. The only steady employment I ever had was in the Army. But not by choice! In the Army I worked in the darkroom. I was working for several magazines at the same time. That's the thing about photographers, we're always working on the back of something else.
TD: I never studied photography. I was twenty-two when I figured what an F Stop was. In my case, I think studying photography would have destroyed me. Maybe for other people it works. My luck was that I wasn't exposed to photography early on. I just saw reality and printed pictures of it. And it was the result of a random decision. I knew I didn't want to be a doctor because I didn't want to study for a long time. At one point, I thought I would become a missionary, in Africa. I come from a deeply Catholic family, growing up in a small town, so there weren't that many options. Now there are so many jobs, people are web designers or whatever. I left Germany for Prague, then to Yugoslavia when the war started. Then I went to Russia for ten years. I traveled a lot.

Thomas Dworzak by Elliott Erwitt

SB: Do you think you need a strategy to pursue your work as a photographer?
EE: I am too old for strategy.
TD: I guess I'm too young for strategy! I'm confused, I don't know, I wish I had a strategy.
EE: You do have a strategy: it's doing whatever you feel like doing.
TD: It's a gut strategy. I trust my guts.
EE: It's the best strategy you could ask for.
TD: The best stuff I've ever done was not the result of a lot of reflection or anything; it was simple guts.
EE: That's what photography is all about.

I caught up with Alex Webb after his recent journey to Ohio:

USA. Youngstown, Ohio. October 6, 2008. Outside bus station. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

Alec Soth: Hey Alex, before we start, maybe you could explain how this project emerged. Who came up with the idea of InSight? And how quickly did the concept turn into you being in Ohio.

Alex Webb: The idea of Magnum photographers going out and documenting the U.S., particularly in relationship to this historic election, has been batted about at Magnum for some time. It only coalesced as a project in September, when Fred Ritchin, Melissa Harris, and the rest of the team -- as well as some funds -- came on board. The notion of my going to Ohio came at least partially out of a personal interest of mine. It is part of a larger project that I hope to continue in the future -- to photograph in several struggling Rust Belt and Sun Belt cities.

USA. Youngstown, Ohio. October 7th, 2008. Downtown. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

Soth: I'm guessing you chose Ohio because it is a swing state. But was there any particular reason you chose it instead of, say, Florida. I mean, you are the author of From the Sunshine State? Have you ever previously worked in Ohio?

Webb: I chose Ohio at least partially because it is a swing state, but also because it fit into my larger idea of photographing Rust Belt and Sun Belt cities (I plan to go to Miami the week before the election.) My wife [the photographer Rebecca Norris Webb] pointed out to me an article which discussed Youngstown, Ohio as a shrinking city. The article noted not only Youngstown's drastic population drop since the closing of the steel mills, but also the innovative program started by the city's mayor to raze abandoned houses and buildings in order to reduce crime and create more green space. The city, rather than sounding the tired refrain that jobs would somehow materialize, had decided to embrace the notion of a shrinking population. I was intrigued by this.

English photographer Olivia Arthur (28) and American-Dutch photographer Peter van Agtmael (27) are the new nominees for 2008.

I briefly e-mailed with them to find out about their motivation to join Magnum and how it felt to be notified of their acceptance. Please post your comments or questions and we will try to find responses and answers to them by our nominees.

Olivia Arthur

© Olivia Arthur/Magnum Photos

For the past two years I have been working on a long-term project about women and the east-west cultural divide. This has been mainly funded though scholarships and grants and I have done relatively little commissioned work.

The motivation for the project is very personal and because of the way I have been working on it, I have had very few guidelines and conditions to follow. This freedom has been amazing for me because it has meant that I have been able to get right into it and let the work unfold as it goes along. It also means that it doesn't necessarily fit into the regular format of photojournalistic stories, and it has not always been easy for me to get it seen.

I see Magnum as a place that thrives on the kind of personal approach and subtle story that I am trying to achieve. I felt that the agency has made a big move in recent years to encourage younger, lesser-known photographers, who have a strong idea of what they want to show, and that really appealed to me. I am still growing and finding my way with my photography and the idea that I can do that under the guidance of an agency like Magnum and its photographers is very special.

Of course I was also encouraged by the fact that I won the Inge Morath Award last year. That gave me the confidence that the photographers liked my work and I was keen to show them what I had done with the grant over the year since they gave it to me. It also meant that I had been in contact with a few of the photographers and was perhaps less intimidated by it than I would have been a few years ago.

The day that they had the meeting in Paris I was at home working. Thomas Dwozak sent me an sms to say congratulations and I was quite stunned, then Paolo Pellegrin called me and it eventually seemed more real. I called my boyfriend and my parents - all of whom knew what this really meant to me - and then I went out to celebrate.

» Olivia Arthur's Website
» Olivia Arthur on the World Press Photo Site
» Olivia Arthur on Photobetty

Peter van Agtmael

© Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos

I felt compelled to pick up a camera because of Magnum, and that discovery has brought great meaning and purpose to my life. I love a huge range of photography, but because of that early and continuing influence, I have always wanted to be a part of the agency. I studied history in college, and Magnum is a historical archive of incredible meaning. I feel honored to have the opportunity to begin contributing my own testimony of our troubled species. As for applying, I'm not really sure why I decided to submit at this particular moment. I felt a really strong impulse, and figured I had nothing to lose. It's hard to describe what I felt when I got the news, it was like a surge of hundreds of feelings at once, but my first articulate feeling was an understanding that my life was entering a really important new phase.

I was with my family at my aunt Marie-Louise's house in Holland when Thomas Dworzak messaged me with the news. She had died the previous week after a long battle with breast cancer, and her funeral had been the previous day. I got the news as I was photographing her son sleeping on her living room couch, while in the background my dad and uncle went through the details of her life, silhouetted by the sharp light of the setting sun. Marie-Louise was really important to me. She had been married to a very active war cameraman, and thus was intimately familiar with the toll that going to war can take on family and oneself.

She was there the day I first told my parents I was going to Iraq, a decision that has changed my life dramatically. A few hours after I broke the news, the two of us went grocery shopping. As we walked and talked, she listened to my reasons intensely, and offered short and loaded answers. She had always really understood me, and on a certain level knew that my mind was made up. Still, she stormed away a few times, condemning me for my selfishness and cursing at me in Dutch. Dutch cursing is always very impressive and intimidating. Ultimately, she supported me, and I often stay with her son Sander before or after I go to wars. The last time I saw her was after leaving Afghanistan last month. I showed her my pictures from the previous two years. She offered a stern critique, but was also very proud. She was a truly wonderful person, and it meant a lot to get the news in her house.

» Peter van Agtmael's Website
» Video: Five Years in Iraq by Peter van Agtmael
» Interview with Peter van Agtmael on Conscientious
» Interview with Peter van Agtmael on Smithsonian
» Photographer's Notebook by Peter van Agtmael on abc News

USA. New York. Dance School. 1977. The image is from part of a photo story about "upper class" children getting dancing lessons and being taught the "social graces". © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

Pia Frankenberg: Since when do you two know each other?

Burt Glinn: We first met in 1952 or ´53 I guess.

Elliott Erwitt: In the morning, I think.

BG: We got introduced and I said to somebody "what's so good about Erwitt?" (grins) I am actually still asking myself that.

PF: When did you join Magnum?

BG: Roughly around the same time, I guess.

EE: ´53

BG: Magnum wasn't a very large organization then. It was... - (turns to Elliott) Oh, by the way, Marc Riboud called the other day and said he'd come across a treasure trove of letters from Henri (Cartier-Bresson, Magnum founding member) to him that he is going to edit and maybe make a book of it.

EE: Really?

BG: He said he didn't know if certain photogaphers would like to have Henri's opinion on record and I said it's okay with me (grins).
Anyway ... I came to New York in ´53 because the Queen was going on a world tour. I don't know whether Elliott did anything on that but I know Eve Arnold did Bermuda or Jamaica and I did one of the Caribbean Islands, too, and that's when I got to know some of the older Magnum people. And then, when Bob and Werner were killed (Robert Capa, Magnum founding member, was killed by a landmine in Indochina and Werner Bischof, a member since 1949, died nine days earlier in a car accident in Peru) we all sort of got together a lot in New York. For one of the most painful funeral services that I ever attended. Do you remember that? For Bob?

EE: Yeah. 1954. May 25th. I remember that because it was my fathers's birthday.

BG: That's when I met Chim (David Seymour, Magnum founding member) for the first time.

Elena Glinn: I think Burt was talking about ´52 before. The queen was covered in ´52.

BG: That's right.

PF: Do you mean the boat "The Queen" or the Queen?

EG: The Queen.

EE: There's only one queen.

BG: Oh, I don't know!

EE: There's only one queen and, huh, what's his name... it's ...

BG: Elton John.

EE:.... he did "My fair Lady". He did the costumes for that.

BG: Oh... Cecil Beaton.

EE: Cecil Beaton! That's the queen.

PF: Do you remember any assignments that you worked on together?

BG: In the early days we both worked a lot for Holiday Magazine. We worked together on an issue on Rome. We were a very strange group of photographers there. Henri and Elliott and Slim Arons and Arnold Newman...

EE: Actually the ususal suspects.

BG: ... and I remember, the government of Italy was so pleased to have a special issue on Rome that they gave what was the Italian equivalent of the Legion of Honor to the editors of Holiday Magazine. I guess we also worked together on the Krushchev tour of America.

© Miguel Rio Branco/Magnum Photos

Jörg Colberg: When people hear "Magnum" I think many of them will think of classic b/w photojournalism. With its use of often very vibrant colour, your work clearly doesn't fall into that category. Now colour photography has been widely accepted, but it hasn't always been this way. Was using colour an obvious choice for you? And since you have a background as a director of photography for movies I'm wondering how much that also contributed to your development of your own photographic style?

Miguel Rio Branco: Today it is possible that when people hear Magnum they are not anymore seeing just traditional black and white, since there are already some members using color in an expressive way for some time, and also I see that Magnum is growing into a dynamic creative force with many individual paths and not only in the traditional photojournalistic way.

My own work was never only about color since after painting, in the beginning I did most of the time both, black and white and color, as well as experimental films (New York 1970-72). What happened is that in 1980, while living in São Paulo, my archives burned, and what was left were mostly the color slides that were traveling with me .

And my color, when I look at it now, I see it as not being really very colorful. Most were monocromatic, with some red and sometimes some blues here and there. Never the whole rainbow. One of the things that shows is that there is a dramatic use of color, and this relates a lot to my painting background. But painting is not only the background since I am still painting again since the mid eighties .

The other link is with cinema and music.

I was never really aware of the big names in photography until 1974, and this after already six years of using photography as my main medium. I lived in New York from 1970 to 1972, and never saw one exhibition of photography; my contacts were mostly with artists and movie people. So my influences came definitely from painting and cinema.

The act of editing came from the audiovisuals that I did at the time, the framing from the movie camera, the not cropping afterwards came from that situation as well as the lack of many verticals.

So my photographic style is basically a non-linear style, which depends very much on the construction of the images, the poetic links created with the images, and not with a linear aspect of framing and use of light and color.

Why did you go to Haiti initially?
I went to Haiti because I wanted to do something to supplement my New York work. It wasn't far, it's three and a half hours direct flight from New York City. They have a Mardi Gras in February so that means people are on the street.

A very important factor is that historically Haitians weren't against being photographed. Whereas if you go to some other Caribbean countries, it would be much tougher to photograph. In other words, you'd put your life really in danger. Like Jamaica, if you don't have an 'entre' it's a tough place and they don't take to being photographed as well. If you're going to the areas I go into, you'll lose your camera or you lose your life.

But I should say, none of the pictures that I had seen of Haiti really knocked me out. There wasn't something that I saw, where I said "Wow, I love that picture so much, Haiti must be great for photographs."

What did you feel was lacking from the photographs you'd seen?
A photo either works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't it could be really horrible or it could be mediocre. That's a dialog that for me doesn't even need to be discussed because you see that it's good or it isn't. I'm not saying that everyone has my vision or my eye, but I'm pretty versed in what makes a good image.

What were looking for, visually and in terms of content?
I just go see what I get. I always work in my style but in every country that I go to I always find something a little different. I can sit there and say, "This is what I'm going to photograph" but then you get there and it's all fantasy because it's not what you thought it was.

I started, I think, in '85 during Mardi Gras and I was with my ex wife. We had a rental car and we were driving it from the airport to the hotel - the airport isn't far from downtown Port-au-Prince, lovely Port-au-Prince - and it was a Sunday night. I remember all these people were running to a soccer match in front of the car. I said to my ex wife, "Where have I been all my life?" because I just knew. It was because of all the people and all the activity and it was just great.

So with this photograph…. To me, Haiti has all the things that should make it a great country having a nice climate, being an island. But it's the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. I think if you work in a factory there, you get 3 dollars a day. That doesn't go very far.

Soth discusses Dog Days Bogotá with his intern, Carrie Thompson, a photography student at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Photographs from the book "Dog Days Bogotá" © Alec Soth/Magnum Photos

Carrie Thompson: You made this book for your daughter, why did you decide to make it for the public?

Alec Soth: Wow, you're starting with the hardest question - you should be a journalist! Unfortunately I don't have a great answer. This work was produced five years ago. After Sleeping by the Mississippi was published, it didn't feel right to do this book. So I just kept it in my back pocket. After Niagara, I guess I was ready.

CT: Tell me about the dogs, how did they become so important?

AS: I was aware of the street kids in Bogotá. I mean, it is a hard thing to ignore, but I was especially attuned to it because of the adoption experience. But I was uncomfortable photographing these kids. So I photographed street-dogs instead. I guess they were a stand-in for the kids.

CT: So do the dogs have different types of personalities in your eyes - like young street children?

AS: Great question. In a way, this gets at why I was uncomfortable photographing the kids. I mean, I wasn't seeing them as individuals; I was generalizing them as a group. I don't like doing that. The dogs are all a little different, but I'm using them largely as an idea.

CT: It seems like you are searching for something in these images, was there something you were looking for?

AS: In the dog pictures or the book as a whole?

CT: All of the photos, the book.

AS: Yeah, I feel like I was looking for something...I'm just not sure what it was. But, of course, it all has to do with my daughter. Since we weren't given too much information about her background, the whole city became charged with her presence. I guess I was looking for signs of her and her background.

CT: Imagine your daughter looking at this book in five years, what do you want to see in her birthplace?

AS: I guess I want it to be a real place for her. I mean, we are already showing her the pictures (we only tore one page out of the book). We talk about Colombia a lot with her. As a five year old, it is just a mythical place. But over time, I want her to absorb it as a real place and as a real part of her history. I suspect that in five years she would be ready to take a trip there.

Alessandra Sanguinetti (38) from Argentina, Jacob Aue Sobol (31) from Denmark and Mikhael Subotzky (25) from South Africa are the new nominees for 2007.

I briefly e-mailed with them to find out about their motivation to join Magnum and how it felt to be notified of their acceptance. A more in depth look at our new nominees will follow in the future. Make sure to post your comments or questions, we will try to find responses and answers to them by our nominees.

Alessandra Sanguinetti

© Alessandra Sanguinetti/Magnum Photos

"I love photography. it is not only a means to an end to me. I love the whole process: from the first idea, all the way to the final print. And sharing it.
I still see making a photograph as an extraordinary and magical act and those qualities make it very powerful.
I wanted to be part of a group of people that I believe still love photography, respect it, don't underestimate it, and think about why, and how they use it.
And who - needless to say - are also photographers I've long admired, many having inspired me since I was a child.
I got a glimpse of how Magnum works through meeting a few of it's members during the application process, and it seems each person receives from the agency as much as they give. Each one uses Magnum in a different way and all coincided it is a chaos, but a beautiful one.
I have to get to know the workings of it. It is all a bit abstract still. And since I'm used to working alone I have to learn how to be part of a group now.

But I do know I want to do something different from what I've been doing on my own in terms of producing. That is another reason i applied: To be surprised and challenged all over again."

On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:

"On the afternoon the voting took place I came home from a picnic in the park with Martin (my husband), my baby Catalina, and a group of friends. There was a message from Susan Meiselas welcoming me to Magnum. So I went right back out, soaking wet on the E train, and celebrated at the MoMA!"

» Alessandra Sanguinetti's website
» Alessandra Sanguinetti's Magnum portfolio

Jacob Aue Sobol

© Jacob Aue Sobol/Magnum Photos

"After having worked a number of years with personal documentary photography, I was looking for a group of photographers, whose aims and ideas I could identify with. Some of the Magnum members have been a great inspiration to me during the creation of my own personality as a photographer, and now that I feel I have developed my own language within photography, I decided to apply for Magnum.

A strong and passionate interest in people and the subjects and a will not to compromise are some of the qualities which has made Magnum an attractive place for me to become part of. It is a very exciting process for me, because I have always worked alone, and I am just getting to learn how photographers can be individuals and still work as a group to obtain common goals."

On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:

"I did not have some crazy reaction, because I was alone with the news, and it seemed a bit unreal. One of the members called me shortly after the decision was made. I was in NY myself to show my work to galleries and a few members before the voting. I received the phone call at a friend's house in Queens, when I was taking a nap on this couch filled with an enormous amount of cat hair. At first I wasn't sure if I was still a sleep or not....

Becoming a nominee at Magnum was a goal that I had aimed for, and now reaching it, at first I didn't know what to do with the news. Then I called my girlfriend in Tokyo, my twin brother in Bangkok and my mother in Copenhagen. The people who always supported me... And their reactions made me understand it was for real. Afterwards I went on a round trip to visit them and celebrate."

» Jacob Aue Sobol's website
» Jacob Aue Sobol's Magnum portfolio

Mikhael Subotzky

© Mikhael Subotzky/Magnum Photos

"Since I started working as a photographer, I have always been represented by galleries rather then by agencies. The freedom that this has allowed has, I think been very important to my work. I haven't had to do assignments in order to make a living or fund work. Instead, I have done this through print sales. This has great advantages in some terms as it allows me to spend almost all my time on long-term personal projects rather then 1-week assignments. I also very much like the exhibition as a form of getting work seen as I think it allows for a very particular and very special form of contemplation of images. In an exhibition, one looks at photographs in a very physical way due to the fact that one walks through an exhibition rather then paging through it. I have also organized exhibitions in interesting and varied locations such as Nelson Mandela's old cell in Pollsmoor Prison, the South African Constitutional Court, and the Italian Parliament. This is also very important to me in ensuring that the work can be seen by a wider audience then just those who attend the more elite commercial galleries and museums.

So, while I am very happy to continue working in this way, I also want my work to be seen as widely as possible in different contexts too. I chose to apply to Magnum because I was attracted to the idea of being a part of an organization with such a strong tradition of engaged photographic practice. It made sense to join an agency for editorial photography, and Magnum was the obvious choice, as it seemed to be the best one. I also share a deep affinity and respect for most of the Magnum photographers and feel attracted to the shared quality of social engagement that seems to define Magnum.

I was given the wrong date for the portfolio meeting in New York, so the physical portfolio that I had gone to some lengths to prepare never arrived on time. When I realized this, I thought, ah well, thats it - no chance now. But Magnum already had a disk of my work which I had sent a few months previously for the preliminary selection at the London office, and somehow I got chosen on the basis of that."

On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:

"I received emails from Martin Parr and Jim Goldberg, I smiled to myself, and was really quite surprised after the portfolio problem. I then carried on preparing for the assignment that I was about to start.

While I am obviously delighted and honored to be chosen for Magnum, I really don't see it as changing anything in the way I work, except hopefully to help me to produce better work and get that work seen. But I don't want to allow anything, especially not the new attention that my work is receiving with the nomination, to distract me from my focus on long-term, sustained, and engaged projects."

» Mikhael Subotzky's website
» Mikhael Subotzky's Magnum portfolio