Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo.
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Marcel Van Ooyen is the President and CEO of GrowNYC and former Legislative Director for the New York City Council.
Mr. Van Ooyen took leadership of GrowNYC in 2006 and under his leadership, GrowNYC has vastly expanded its efforts with new initiatives including: Fresh Food Box - a weekly affordable food mix for low-income residents, teen run farm stands in underserved communities, and NYC’s first all local food hub: Greenmarket Co. GrowNYC’s Food Stamp in the Farmers’ Market initiative is considered a National model, with $1,000,000 in SNAP sales in 2013. Marcel has also spearheaded the development of new programs in response to needs in our city, including Grow to Learn NYC: Citywide School Gardens Initiative, a public public-private partnership with the Mayor’s Office created to inspire, promote and facilitate the creation of sustainable school gardens in every New York City public school.
Marcel earned his degree at the University of California Irvine and has his JD from Seattle University School of Law. He is the former Legislative Director for the New York City Council, where he wrote and ensured the adoption of more than 30 environmental laws.
Elliott Landy, born in 1942, began photographing the anti-Vietnam war movement and the underground music culture in New York City in 1967.
He photographed many of the underground rock and roll superstars, both backstage and onstage, from 1967 to 69.
His images of Bob Dylan and The Band, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, Richie Havens, and many others documented the music scene during that classic rock and roll period which culminated with the 1969 Woodstock Festival, of which he was the official photographer.
After that, Elliott moved on to other inspirations and art forms, photographing his own children and travels, creating impressionist flower photographs and doing motion and kaleidoscopic photography in both still and film formats.
His photographs have been published worldwide for many years in all print mediums including covers of Rolling Stone, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, etc. and album covers, calendars, photographic book collections, etc.
He has published Woodstock Vision, The Spirit of A Generation, in book and CD-ROM format, and authored the book Woodstock 69, The First Festival.
GrowNYC helps New Yorkers by providing essential services and taking action to make NYC a truly livable city, one where every person can thrive.
GrowNYC was originally created in 1970 as the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC). Born out of the spirit of the first Earth Day, CENYC was initially a policy-based organization, writing comprehensive reports about quality of life issues like air quality, traffic, and noise. Our city has changed a lot since then and so have we. As the largest and most established environmental organization in NYC, we are proud to have played a pivotal role in helping New York City transform over the past five decades. Today 3 million New Yorkers each year participate in our programs.
We envision a New York in which every New Yorker can flourish. Every garden. Every school. Every street. Every neighborhood. Every borough.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to working-class Jewish parents of Eastern European descent, Leonard Freed first wanted to become a painter. However, he began taking photographs while in the Netherlands in 1953 and discovered that this was where his passion lay.
In 1954, after trips throughout Europe and North Africa, he returned to the United States and studied in Alexei Brodovitch’s ‘design laboratory’. He moved to Amsterdam in 1958 and photographed the Jewish community there. He pursued this concern in numerous books and films, examining German society and his own Jewish roots. His book on the Jews in Germany was published in 1961, and Made in Germany, about post-war Germany, appeared in 1965.
Working as a freelance photographer from 1961 onwards, Freed began to travel widely, photographing blacks in America (1964-65), events in Israel (1967-68), the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the New York City police department (1972-79). He also shot four films for Japanese, Dutch and Belgian television.
Early in Freed’s career, Edward Steichen, then Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, bought three of his photographs for the museum. Steichen told Freed that he was one of the three best young photographers he had seen and urged him to remain an amateur, as the other two were now doing commercial photography and their work had become uninteresting. ‘Preferably,’ he advised, ‘be a truck driver.’
Freed joined Magnum in 1972. His coverage of the American civil rights movement first made him famous, but he also produced major essays on Poland, Asian immigration in England, North Sea oil development, and Spain after Franco. Photography became Freed’s means of exploring societal violence and racial discrimination.
Everard Findlay blends branding and social innovation to empower CEOs, heads of state, and thought leaders to invest in a future that benefits citizens, the environment, and society as a whole while building profitability and growth.
Findlay has served on the board of GrowNYC, the Council for the Environment of New York City since 2009 and is currently Communications Chair. He is a founding trustee of The Museum of the Courageous, NeueHouse, tenured board member of Soho House, UNDP Turning Tables, Dartmouth College’s Institute for Cross-engagement, The New York Times’ Friends of TimesTalks Committee and The National Center for Children in Poverty.
Born in Paris in 1928 to Russian parents, Erwitt spent his childhood in Milan, then emigrated to the US, via France, with his family in 1939. As a teenager living in Hollywood, he developed an interest in photography and worked in a commercial darkroom before experimenting with photography at Los Angeles City College. In 1948, he moved to New York and exchanged janitorial work for film classes at the New School for Social Research.
Erwitt traveled in France and Italy in 1949 with his trusty Rolleiflex camera. In 1951, he was drafted for military service and undertook various photographic duties while serving in a unit of the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France.
While in New York, Erwitt met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker, the former head of the Farm Security Administration. Stryker initially hired Erwitt to work for the Standard Oil Company, where he was building up a photographic library for the company, and subsequently commissioned him to undertake a project documenting the city of Pittsburgh.
In 1953, Erwitt joined Magnum Photos and worked as a freelance photographer for Collier’s, Look, LIFE, Holiday and other luminaries in that golden period for illustrated magazines. To this day, he is for hire and continues to work for a variety of journalistic and commercial outfits.
In the late 1960s, Erwitt served as Magnum’s president for three years. He then turned to film: in the 1970s, he produced several notable documentaries and in the 1980s eighteen comedy films for HBO. Erwitt became known for benevolent irony, and for a humanistic sensibility traditional to the spirit of Magnum.
Anderson was born in Canada and grew up in west Texas. In 2000, on assignment for the New York Times Magazine, he boarded a small wooden boat with 44 Haitians trying to sail to America. The boat sank in the Caribbean. The photographs received the Robert Capa Gold Medal and marked the beginning of a 10 period as a contract photographer for Newsweek Magazine and National Geographic Magazine. In 2011 he became New York Magazine’s first ever Photographer in Residence.
Anderson is the author of four monographs and lives between Brooklyn and Barcelona and is a member of Magnum Photos.