The Photographers’ Selection: 2025

In December, we asked Magnum photographers to reflect on their new work from the past year and submit a few of their stand-out images. From the submissions received, Magnum co-presidents Gregory Halpern, Newsha Tavakolian, and Lorenzo Meloni have curated a selection to represent the year to date, featuring commissions from around the world, as well as new images from personal projects or daily life. 

Here is the Magnum round-up for 2025, from the photographers’ perspectives. 

We begin with a photograph (above) by Alec Soth of German aerospace engineer Rüdiger Koch. In January of this year, Koch broke the Guinness World Record for the longest period of uninterrupted underwater living, spending 120 days in his SeaPod, which floats three meters above the ocean’s surface. Soth’s photograph of Koch was published in an article by The New York Times Magazine, titled “The Techno-Utopians Who Want to Colonize the Sea.”

Rafał Milach, who continues this year to document various facets of life during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, contributes a photograph made in October of “The Heroes” Memorial on Independence Square in Kyiv, dedicated to the fallen Ukrainian and foreign soldiers since 2022. 

This photograph from Chien-Chi Chang was made in Ukraine, which he has documented extensively since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Here, a group of Ukrainian soldiers launches an attack at the front line at Kherson. Chang has made over nine visits to the country since 2022, and published a personal essay, titled Fight or Flee: The Price of Freedom, in February.

Selected for Emin Özmen is a photograph from his extensive documentation of widespread protest and police violence in the streets of Istanbul in March, following the arrest and imprisonment of Ekrem İmamoğlu, mayor of Istanbul and main political opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Zied Ben Romdhane, who became a full Member of Magnum Photos in June, shares a photograph of a group of teenagers scaling a wall during a strike against industrial pollution in the Tunisian city of Gabes in October. This year, Ben Romdhane continues his long-term documentation of climate crises in Tunisia and around the world, as well as his series exploring youth and ennui among Tunisia’s younger generations. 

Alessandra Sanguinetti shares a photograph from the final hours of the DSEI Arms Fair in London on September 12, described the “largest arms fair in history.” In her caption, she speaks of the surge in drone and counter-drone technology at the fair, “many of these tested and ‘refined’ during the two-year, live-streamed Israeli genocide in Gaza.” 

The photograph selected by Larry Towell shows a farm worker in Fresno County, California. Towell’s series documents some of the 500,000 to 800,000 farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley, the majority of whom are Mexican-born, with up to 40% estimated to be undocumented. Many are now in hiding due to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after Trump called on federal agencies to execute “the single largest mass deportation programme in history” earlier in the year.

Also in California, Yael Martínez shares an image from his ongoing series Where the Horizon Burns, a deeply personal interrogation of migration and violence in the United States, following his own journey to California from Mexico in 2007. In El Cajon, where he first worked in construction for a year and a half with his uncle, he now photographs Celestino, originally from Veracruz.

In Las Vegas, in partnership with the non-profit Vegas Stronger, Jérôme Sessini presents an image from the underground communities of the city’s vast tunnel network, where an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 people live. Above is Elliott, 30 years old, from Tennessee, who has lived there since 2017. 

Continuing his work in Sudan, Moises Saman shares an image from West Darfur showing families from Khartoum sheltering in an IDP camp. Saman, who was awarded a Pulitzer in May, embedded with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in July and August for two weeks, documenting Darfur and Sudanese refugee camps in Chad. The series was published by TIME in September. 

From Alex Majoli is a photograph from his documentation of the worsening human impact of the crisis in South Sudan in September. South Sudan has suffered from a significant decline in aid funding this year, while hardship and uncertainty continue to rise due to ongoing internal conflicts and the repercussions of the war in neighboring Sudan.

Paolo Pellegrin shares an image of Gaioz Babutsidze, a Georgian refugee from the 1991–1992 South Ossetia war, with his son and daughter-in-law. Babutsidze was one of the 30,000 Georgians expelled from South Ossetia, a mini-republic carved out by Russian-supported separatist forces through violence and ethnic cleansing since the fall of the Soviet Union. Babutsidze’s story, along with those of many others, was published earlier this year in an article by The New York Times.

Nanna Heitmann shares a photograph from a series commissioned by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in March, documenting the newly launched HPV vaccination campaign. From remote villages in the Annapurna mountain range to the capital, she spoke with individuals who participated in the 15-day nationwide vaccination program, targeting 1.6 million girls aged 10-14.

Jim Goldberg selects a new collage of a front page from The New York Times in August 2024, altering the faces of 133 people who had visited Mar-a-Lago three or more times since 2021.

An image from Newsha Tavakolian’s series I AM STILL HERE is selected, which photographs nine women who survived human trafficking, documenting their resilience and their journeys to healing. Tavakolian ran a collaborative project, offering a means of self-connection through art: each woman painted over an older portrait of herself, as a symbolic act of “reclaiming their identity after the trauma of sex trafficking,” Tavakolian wrote.

Patrick Zachmann shares an image of two women grieving on he site of the Nova music festival in the Negev, Israel, showing tributes to those who were killed on October 7, 2023. 

Thomas Dworzak’s photograph is from Svalbard in March, and represents part of his ongoing project The New Iron Curtain. Since 2023, Dworzak has been traveling along the Russian border, from Finland to eastern Kazakhstan, photographing military training, landscapes, museums, and everyday moments of life in these areas. 

Mark Power selects an image from his latest trip to the U.S. for his mammoth Good Morning, America series. This photograph was made in snowy Roanoke, Virginia, on December 6.

Alex Webb shares a photograph of a flea market in Oakland, California, from his upcoming photobook, Walking Blues, which will be published by Aperture in the fall of 2026.

From Cristina De Middel comes a photograph from her magical realist portrayal of Hampden Estate, one of the oldest sugar estates in Jamaica, located in the northwest of the island.

In November, photographs by Steve McCurry, Olivia Arthur, Raghu Rai, Chien-Chi Chang, and Gueorgui Pinkhassov were published in Bhutan: Portrait of a Kingdom, in which 10 photographers travelled across the country, capturing its landscape and traditions through the seasons.

For this year’s selection, Steve McCurry (above) contributes a photograph of his ongoing documentation of Bhutan, made in May of this year at a Buddhist monastery in Bumthang. Meanwhile, Olivia Arthur (below) selects an image of two people bathing.

Gregory Halpern’s selection comes from the home of Nicéphore Niépce, French inventor and pioneer of the early photograph, in a meditative visual exploration of the role of photography via perception and obscuration. Titled Shadow Collection, Halpern’s series was made as part of the A World in Color project, which saw photographers revisiting Magnum’s recently unearthed color slide archive in Paris, and creating a new body of work in response.

Matt Black, one of the 22 recipients of this year’s prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, selects a photograph made during a trip to South Korea.

Susan Meiselas shares an image from her series A Day in the Life of the Las Vegas Showgirl, made on assignment for Vogue.com, exploring the legacy of the “Las Vegas Showgirls.”

After a decade of living in the UK, Lúa Ribeira has been returning to her homeland this year, creating a study of the symbolic landscape and exploring the contemporary signs of fading industrial power, military tensions and migratory and housing crises. Her contribution to the selection was made in the small town of Ferrol in Galicia. 

David Hurn photographs summer festivities in his hometown of Tintern, Wales…

…while Ian Berry’s photograph depicts an intergenerational street scene in Salisbury, England. 

And from Stuart Franklin, a continuation of his visual documentation of trees across five continents, this time from Malta.

Mikahel Subotzky shares an intimate moment during a family holiday in Zanzibar.

Richard Kalvar contributes a moment from this year’s Magnum Annual General Meeting, which took place online in June, featuring Emin Özmen and Paolo Pellegrin (on screen).

And finally, Sohrab Hura shares a new drawing, soft pastel on paper, titled “The Collective.”

The Photographers’ Selection 2025 was curated by Magnum co-presidents Gregory Halpern, Newsha Tavakolian, and Lorenzo Meloni. For regular updates on new work from Magnum photographers, sign up to the weekly Field Notes newsletter here.