Eve Arnold. USA. Mt. Sinai, New York. 1955. US actress Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
A favorite amongst print enthusiasts, the Magnum Square Print Sale returns with a fresh theme and some remarkable photographs available for purchase. Titled Odyssey and presented in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery, this year’s edition explores journeys both physical and deeply personal, across borders, through memory, and into the unknown.
Running until March 29th, over 100 signed or estate-stamped 6×6″ prints are available from $110/£110/€120.
Among my personal highlights are prints by Stuart Franklin, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Yael Martinez, though with so many remarkable photographers in the mix, narrowing it down is no easy task.
Magnum Square Print Sale Favorites
Alessandra Sanguinetti
ARGENTINA. Buenos Aires. 2001. Ducks in truck. From the project On the Sixth Day (1997-2007).
That duckling perched on the edge of a cardboard box, the chaos of the farmyard going on behind it, is just wonderful. There is so much life packed into one frame.
Larry Towell
USA. NYC. 9/11/2001. A dazed man picks up a paper that was blown out of the towers after the attack of the World Trade Center, and begins to read it.
A man stands reading a piece of paper in the middle of a dust-covered Manhattan street, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. It is one of the most quietly powerful images of 9/11 I have ever seen.
Paul Fusco
USA. 1968. Robert KENNEDY funeral train.
The motion blur turns what might have been a straightforward crowd scene into something almost dreamlike. Everything is movement and color and energy, and I find it impossible to look away.
Stuart Franklin
SOUTH AMERICA. Ecuador. Climbing the Wimpier summit of Mount Chimborazo. 1993.
A lone figure making their way up a vast snowfield, their footprints the only mark on an otherwise untouched landscape. It is a photograph that makes you feel both the scale of the world and the smallness of a single person within it.
Trent Parke
AUSTRALIA. Outback Queensland. Mount Isa. Mining town. 2004.
Dark silhouettes, industrial smokestacks and a brooding sky make this feel more like a painting than a photograph. Parke has a gift for finding the strange and the cinematic in everyday scenes, and this is a fine example.
Yael Martinez
MEXICO. Guerrero. Malinaltepec. 2021. Tha hand and the Chapulin. The hand of a peasant and The “chapulin”, the knives to grate opium gum, handcrafted by poppy farmers.
The combination of a worn, working hand and the scattered points of light feel tender and mysterious at the same time. It is the kind of image that stays with you.
Purchase Yours…
The full collection is available now at the Magnum Store, where over 100 prints are waiting to be discovered. These are signed, museum-quality photographs that you can own and live with forever. Well worth a look.
More reading: Ella Morton’s Photography Helps You Feel What Words Can’t Describe
