The Brooklyn Rail

In late 2021, Abiba Coulibaly returned to London after finishing her master’s and joined the team at Magnum Photos, where we first met. We became close soon after. Both of us had entered the photography cooperative through a traineeship intended to diversify the workforce of London’s cultural institutions. During our lunch breaks, we talked about the limits of such initiatives and tried to make sense of an internal culture that could be toxic and chaotic, often questioning Magnum’s place in a Western photojournalistic tradition shaped by an imperial gaze.