Magnum & Friends: SPS returns
It's back for its 21st edition. And this time Magnum invited along some fellow travelers....
The Square Print Sale returns this month, April 17–23, and for its 21st edition Magnum’s members have invited some of their friends — artists, filmmakers, and fellow photographers — to join in.
The sale includes a hundred signed or estate-stamped museum-quality 6×6” prints, all priced $110/£110/€120, including classics, rarities and off-beat surprises by three generations of Magnum photographers, together with the contributions of the 13 invited friends — are available only for the duration of the one-week sale, never to be reprinted in the same size or format again.
These fellow travelers include photographers as diverse as Todd Hido and Ed Templeton, who between them have published more than 40 books, alongside relative newcomers, Hannah Reyes Morales and Miranda Barnes, both of whom have built an international following over the past decade with outstanding personal and editorial projects.
The friends also include Alejandro Cartagena, who was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2019, The Anonymous Project, who collaborated with Martin Parr on Déja View, and the estates of Larry Sultan and Weegee, two of the most influential names in the history of American photography.
They are joined by Alfredo Jaar, a Chilean installation artist who uses film and photography in his work, and who was the recipient of the Hasselblad Award in 2020; cinematographer Roger Deakins, the winner of two Oscars; Emmy®-winning director Judd Apatow and actor Jason Lee; and Rebecca Norris Webb, a poet and photographer who collaborated with her partner, the Magnum photographer Alex Webb, on the recently published book, Waves.
The theme is ‘Vital Signs’, the third and final part of the ‘Then. Now. Next.’ triptych, organized as part of the agency’s 75th-anniversary celebrations, which began last May with a series of events and shows around the theme ‘In Dialogue.’ Having already reflected on the past and raised questions about the present, this new curation is a look to the future — a musing on the hopes, fears, and anticipation of things to come.
And it is no surprise that in the final of the agency’s triptych, many of the selected images focus on the next generation. Lindokuhle Sobekwa, the inaugural recipient of the major John Kobal Foundation Fellowship, selects an image of a young boy from Johannesburg taking a break in the fields. Even with his eyes closed, we feel him dreaming up at the sky. Sabiha Çimen chooses an image from her award-winning first photobook, Hafiz, of students from a girls-only Quran school on a funfair ride. A plane flies so low over their heads, that it seems almost within their reach.
“We are opening the doors and inviting our long-time friends to join the conversation,” Cristina de Middel, the agency’s president, comments. “The invitation is just a formality, as the photography family has always shared a house — a house that is busy, and in constant renovation. As a family, we are now, once again, looking at the future with more questions than answers.”
Elsewhere in the sale, there are some classics, such as Susan Meiselas’ behind-the-curtain shot from Carnival Strippers, or Inge Morath’s portrait of the elegant Audrey Hepburn on the set of The Unforgiven in 1959, and from de Middel herself, an image from her 2015 book, This Is What Hatred Did.
"The photography family has always shared a house — a house that is busy, and in constant renovation."
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The prints are available only for the duration of the one-week sale, never to be reprinted in the same size or format again. They will all be on view at the Magnum Gallery, London, during the week of the sale.
The sale opens at 9am EDT on April 17 and runs through until 23.59pm EDT on April 23.
Visit here for further details and updates. Or sign up for alerts here, and you could be in line to win one of five of the prints in the sale.
