About InSight America

Who are the people of America? What are we thinking? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us hope? Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?

What is the American Dream today?

Bruce Gilden interviews Sandy Agusta and Maria Oquendo in Forth Myers, Florida. Photos by Stephen Reel.

InSight America is an innovative documentary project that aims to explore these questions on the eve of one of the most important elections in American history. Calling on the talents of some of the world’s most respected photojournalists, using the Web to update their observations daily, InSight America is a collage of personal investigations and reflections that attempts to capture the things preoccupying Americans during the weeks leading to Election Day.

What does Wall Street look and feel like during some of its most trying times ever? How do homeowners in Florida recover after losing their homes? How are African-American communities reacting to the Obama candidacy? How do families on military bases hear the debates over the futures of Iraq and Afghanistan? What about the troops in Baghdad’s Green Zone? How are artists responding? What is going on in churches? What about auto workers? What motivates the countless young campaign workers who knock on doors?

All the photographers working on this project are members of Magnum Photos, an international collective founded in 1947. Just as Magnum Photos previously documented the first 100 days of John F. Kennedy’s administration, this month-long Web-based project is meant to confront and contextualize a critical moment in U.S. history, using photographs, audio, video, diaries, blogs, podcasts and statistics. Supported by veteran editors and the innovative multimedia team responsible for the award-winning Magnum in Motion, InSight America features independent and idiosyncratic points of view, unfiltered by the constraints of mainstream media.

About Magnum

Magnum Photos is a photographic cooperative of great distinction that is owned by its photographer-members. Acclaimed for their powerful individual vision, Magnum photographers chronicle the world and interpret its people, events, issues, and personalities with empathy for their subject matter. Founded at the MoMA after the close of World War II in 1947 by the legendary Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David “Chim” Seymour, Magnum Photos celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2007. Today the agency encompasses over 70 members of extraordinary talent and diversity and reflects a longstanding tradition of individual vision. Through its four editorial offices in New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, a digital library of 450,000 images, and a network of 15 subagents, Magnum Photos provides photographs to the press, publishers, advertising, galleries, and museums across the world. Its Cultural Department produces more than 200 exhibitions per year worldwide. By capturing defining moments of the 20th century with iconic images that have shaped our collective memory, Magnum Photos continues to set a standard for photographic integrity and authorship.