Square Print Sale Stories: The One It Came All This Way For
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.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, Victoria and has held residencies in the US, Brazil and the V&A Museum in London. She is the recipient of a Technē scholarship for doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her debut collection, Quiet, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Rathbones Folio Prize for Poetry and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.
For The One it Came All This Way For, Bulley produced four poems in response to 28 photographs, giving voice to the images via a series of fractal monologues.
Here, we explore the images that inspired Bulley’s reflections, as well as some excerpts from her piece.
“it will / not touch you they told us it will step over / you like a bad luck crack in the pavement”
— Victoria Adukwei Bulley
“I’m a simple guy / all the furs & bright feathers won’t beat / the sunlight on my face like I’m the one it came / all this way for”
— Victoria Adukwei Bulley
“two eyes behind glass, you do not see / what they hold now, what will be held / for what’s left of their lives”
— Victoria Adukwei Bulley
“it meant / you could be anyone / which meant you / could be you.”
— Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Read the full poems, The One it Came All This Way For by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, on Granta’s website from Monday, April 29.
See an image that you like?
The sale, featuring 85 signed or estate-stamped Square Prints from the Magnum archive, runs on the Magnum Online Store from Monday, April 29 through Sunday, May 5, 2024.
