Square Print Sale Stories: It Is Decidedly So
Fable, a Magnum Square Print Sale organized in partnership with Granta magazine, celebrates the art of storytelling through word and image.
For more than 75 years, Magnum photographers have worked closely with writers to craft compelling narratives — intimate and grand alike. Titled “Fable,” this spring’s Magnum Square Print Sale marks the first time in the sale’s history that the cooperative is partnering with an esteemed literary magazine. Together with Granta, “Fable” explores the symbiosis of visual and written narratives.
During the online sale, running from April 29 to May 5, there will be 85 images available to purchase as limited-edition 6 x 6” prints. A selection of the images will be shown at events in Paris, London and New York, providing a rare opportunity to purchase Square Prints in person during the week of the sale and attend live signings.
In its 10-year history, the Square Print Sale has featured over 1600 images and 24 themes. With “Fable,” Magnum and Granta champion the lasting impact of stories and their tellers. Fables are foundational stories about human nature. Illustrating timeless truths about virtue and vice, they turn on the moral dilemmas that people face and teach universal lessons that are accessible and memorable through a combination of words and images.
Granta has commissioned three writers, Sara Baume, Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Derek Owusu, to muse on the work of 85 Magnum photographers, weaving stories inspired by a bespoke selection of images.
Sara Baume is the author of three novels, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, A Line Made by Walking, and Seven Steeples, and one book of nonfiction, handiwork. In 2023, her name was included on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list, which identifies the 20 most significant British novelists under age 40. She lives and works on the south coast of Ireland.
For It Is Decidedly So, Baume assembled a series of 21 reflections to accompany a series of 28 photographs. The short pieces form a mosaic, tracing a loose outline through snapshots of memories, experiences and dreams.
Here, we explore the images that inspired Baume’s reflections, as well as some excerpts from her piece.
“I can tell the crow is cawing from the way she holds her beak and body, by the tension running down her grey back. She moves as if she is throwing the sound of herself out of the tip of her beak, giving the call a flying start.”
— Sara Baume
“I wear my binoculars, a dead weight against my breastbone, a tug at the back of my neck. I raise them to search for the seabird, a fulmar, that I thought I saw, but I struggle to grasp the abrupt shift of distance, the jumped kilometres, to recognise a patch of clouded sky.”
— Sara Baume
“The last time he saw his son he had tried to give him money, throwing a wad of notes through the open passenger window of the van as it began to move away, the wheels already turning, the wad unspooling and scattering across the grey upholstery and down to the rubber mats and biscuit wrappers and banana skins.”
— Sara Baume
“For several seconds I fight against the force of seawater dragging against me, the little stones beating my skin, the slapping kelp. Afterwards I sit in the passenger seat of the van wrapped in my beach towel and think how, minutes earlier, I almost died, and yet everything is exactly the same; the same view blurring past the passenger window, the same smell of wet dog, the same satsuma peel in the pocket of the dashboard, the same shoes at the ends of my lacerated ankles, the same rain.”
— Sara Baume
