VII Photo Agency

VII Photo Agency was founded by seven of the world’s leading independent photojournalists, Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonín Kratochvíl, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, and John Stanmeyer, in September 2001, days before 9/11. Named for its founding members, VII was conceived as a photographer-owned collective at a moment of significant consolidation in the photo agency industry. Its first assignment was photographing the collapse of the World Trade Center. In the years that followed, VII documented the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East, earning a reputation for uncompromising visual journalism on the defining issues of the 21st century.

de.MO was there at the beginning, designing VII’s complete brand identity, logo, and website at the agency’s inception. That founding relationship has continued across more than two decades and numerous award-winning books and special projects. Among them is Rethink: Cause and Consequences of September 11, designed, produced, and published by de.MO, combining photographic essays by the VII photographers alongside written contributions from Kofi Annan, The Dalai Lama, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Edward Said, Arundhati Roy, Thomas L. Friedman, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jon Lee Anderson, Robert Fisk, and Wesley Clark, among others. A document of history, politics, and conscience at a moment of profound global flux, Rethink received the Photo District News Best Book Selection and the Communication Arts Best Book Selection.

de.MO also designed, art directed, and published War in its entirety, receiving the AIGA 50 Books / 50 Covers award, First Prize at Picture of the Year International, and the Independent Publishers Best Book of the Year Award. Taken together, these projects represent one of the most sustained and decorated collaborations between a design studio and a photojournalism agency in the field.