Magnum photos are selling iconic prints for $100

5 June 2017

Magnum photos have made prints by more than 70 artists available as part of their June 2017 Square Print sale, one of four coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the famous agency.

Cotton Candy. Oaxaca, Mexico. 1990 © Alex Webb / Magnum Photos. “I’ve been photographing in the streets of Mexico for some 40 years, and there’s one particular city that I feel especially close to— the airy, vibrant, lyrical Oaxaca. Each time I photograph this mysterious southern city, I discover another hidden street, another obscure festival and, surprisingly, something more about myself. Perhaps Robert Capa’s advice about getting closer refers to the heart as well as to the feet.”

The sale seeks to investigate the legacy of Magnum’s co-founders Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David ‘Chim’ Seymour and George Rodger and how their work continues to inform and influence photography to the present day.

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” Magnum co-founder Robert Capa famously said. The Picture Post (December 3, 1938) described Capa as “the greatest war photographer in the world” when he was just 25. His maxim has become almost as famous as his body of work, which continues to influence generations of photographers

Cecilia. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1995 © Alessandra Sanguinetti / Magnum Photos. “Back in 1993 I lived on a third floor, in an old building, on a narrow street, in downtown Buenos Aires. My bedroom had a little balcony that faced straight onto another third floor balcony of the building across the street. Every day I’d see three young sisters hanging the washing out to dry on the railing, sweeping, playing, or throwing the keys down to someone waiting to get in. I started taking pictures of them when they came out, and we would wave at one another. The narrowness of the street between us made it seem like they were closer than they were. Eventually, I crossed the street and rang a few doorbells (there were ten third floor apartments). To everyone that replied I’d say I was the girl from in front that took pictures, until I rang the right bell and they let me in. This started a year long relationship with them and their Mom.

Encompassing both classic and contemporary practices, the square print project includes photographs of history-defining moments such as Stuart Franklin’s Tank Man image from Tiananmen Square (1989), Robert Capa’s D-Day series (1944), and Abbas’s Iranian Revolution coverage (1979), alongside work from contemporary masters of photojournalism Matt Black, Paolo Pellegrin, Diana Markosian and Lorenzo Meloni.

Magnum's 'Closer' square print sale runs from Monday 5 June 2017 at 8AM EST until Friday, 9 June 2017 at 6PM EST. Signed and estate stamped, museum quality, 6x6” prints from over 70 artists will exceptionally be available for $100, for 5 days only, from shop.magnumphotos.com.

Japan, 2006 © Antoine d’Agata / Magnum Photos. “The gaze doesn’t focus on an event itself but on what converges around it. My courage fails me. A gesture and its sublimation are equally necessary, a forced reconciliation of the transparent, illusory aspect of fiction with the brutality of experience. A tense muscle, a thought stealing away, inept, drunken, voluptuousness; the desire to conjure up a conformist distance and a well-worn chronology. The strategy of failure: leaving a body to its fate, the bestiality of desire against all rules leads to the dissolution of the senses, a breakdown of common law. What’s immediate and what lasts coincide in a vain gesture. Understanding disorder is predestined to fail... Economics of squandering, violence driven by libidinal energy, according to the intangible rules of performance.”

Subway. New York City, USA. 1980 © Bruce Davidson/ Magnum Photos. “In 1980, the New York subway system was deplorable—unsafe, scribbled all over with graffiti. Some of it very interesting. I took it upon myself to explore the 500 stations in the subway complex. I started with black and white then shifted over to color because I found a lot of meaning in color in the subway. So I would go each day and night to a different place in the subway system to photograph people, making contact in many cases. I began to have a kind of tunnel vision, a compulsion to explore color, form, and life in this very rich and treacherous environment.”

Altai Republic, Russia. 2000. (Alternate Take) © Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum Photos. “I’ve always tried to follow Capa’s adage about getting closer. The irony is that my most well-known image of a crashed spacecraft with butterflies was taken from afar with a big, long telephoto lens. Without that, the butterflies would be all but invisible in the image. I did, in fact, try some images with a wide angle lens, but the pictures just got worse and worse the closer I got. This is an outtake that’s about 10 frames after the more well-known image.

Mar del Plata, Argentina. 2014 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos. “I love Mar del Plata. It is safe to say the Argentines do as well. With 17km of beaches and 2000 hotels, it is by far the biggest resort in the country. Indeed, it may be the biggest resort in the world. The real sun lovers, generally over 50, are out in the hot January sun by 9am; this was a great time to shoot and to come up close on some of the real characters.”

El Paso, Texas, USA. 2015 © Matt Black/Magnum Photos. "You can be right next to something and still not see it. Or you can be across the street and connect. I think this is also what Capa meant: don't just be there, feel it. Dive in." — Matt Black