Me-Mo are updating the photography collective for the internet age

If you thought photography was an individual pursuit, think again. Photography collectives, from Magnum to VII to The Deadbeat Club, have always played an important role in pushing the medium forward. In this regular series, Collective Vision, we find the photographers who are stoking a resurgence of the collective and rewriting the rules of the game.

Me-Mo is short for Memory in Motion and is a collaboration between five award-winning journalists to find innovative and engaging ways to share their work. In partnership with web creatives Libre, the group are using technology to develop new forms of visual storytelling through a quarterly print and digital interactive magazine. They successfully funded the project through IndieGogo earlier this year and are currently working on Issue 0, whose theme will be “Fear”.

Me-Mo is based between Turin, Barcelona and Paris but its members Fabio Bucciarelli, Manu Brabo, Guillem Valle, Diego Ibarra Sánchez and José Colón work all over the world and strive to tell stories that otherwise would be not be told. Their work focusses on international conflicts, historical events, human rights violations and social injustices, and they have reported from Syria, Libya, Serbia, Israel/Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan, among others.

Huck spoke to co-founder and secretary Guillem Valle, whose personal work includes a long-term project about Stateless nations around the globe, to find out more about Me-Mo.

What made you decide to join forces?
Well, we were kind of tired of not getting our stories published in the way we wanted – even published at all. Therefore, we thought it could be a good idea to create our own media so we could show our work, and do it in a way that fits our own criteria.

When we started exploring the possibilities offered by technology, in terms of interactivity and multimedia language, we soon realised how strongly we could push the limits of the storytelling. I can say that developing new ways to present documentary photography is one of our main motivations now.

What does working together allow you to do that you couldn’t do by yourselves?
It’s really complicated to start a publication so it would be unthinkable to start a project like this alone.

What have you learned from other photographers in the collective? Has working together changed the work you produce?
I’m learning a lot in terms of commercial stuff, as well as how to work in team. On the other hand, since we are exploring new ways to present our work, we are all learning from each other in terms of creativity. It’s really amazing to see how the project grows day by day, thanks to the common effort and imagination.

What’s the future for the collective?
We hope to serve as an example to others, in the sense that nowadays it’s possible to do our job in cooperation with other like-minded colleagues. Taking this route allows photographers and journalists to avoid the precarious conditions they are often condemned to.

Check out Me-Mo Magazine.

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