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Way for Escape: The Magnum Square Print Sale

Magnum's July 2021 Square Print Sale collects images on adventuring as well as seeking inner peace

Abbas After the Ali-Foreman boxing fight. Kinshasa, Zaire. 1974. "The next day, I found Ali. It was like meeting Dr. Jekyll after rubbing shoulders with Mr. Hyde. He was calm, pensive; he no longer nee (...)

Peter van Agtmael Sicily, Italy. 2015.

“I can escape to the beach, but no matter how hard I try, I have trouble escaping from my camera."

– Peter van Agtmael © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos

Khalik Allah Harlem, New York City, USA. 2017. From the "125th & Lexington" series. “The only way of escaping a problem is by facing it. Averting our gaze is often how problems are deepened. The more you loo (...)

Christopher Anderson Onboard an airplane. 2017. “I made this photograph on a flight over the Mediterranean Sea. It was summer. Everyone had the ‘holiday’ tan. I guess we were all escaping something. Many of my pic (...)

Antoine d’Agata Thermal photography. Metro station Olympiades, Paris. Lockdown. March 17, 2020. From the project, Virus. “Living beings experience the state of dissatisfaction. They try to carve themselves a kind (...)

Eve Arnold On the set of 'The Magus', directed by Guy Green. 1967. “How do we escape from boredom? We play. Eve commented on her photograph of Anthony Quinn and his screen-mate Anna Karina: ‘By now it is (...)

Olivia Arthur Tbilisi, Georgia. 2006. “Recently, I have been avidly reading prison memoirs by women from different parts of the world. The stories are varied and in many cases extreme, but there is also an ove (...)

Micha Bar Am ‘Morning Bathers’. Tel Aviv, Israel. 1970.

"It was a chilly winter morning on the Tel Aviv beach, but the obsessive morning swimmers kept up their routine.”

– Micha Bar Am © Micha Bar Am | Magnum Photos

Bruno Barbey Moulay Ismael Mausoleum, Meknes, Morocco. 1985. "The photographer must learn to merge into the walls. Photos must either be taken swiftly, with all the attendant risks, or only after long periods (...)

Jonas Bendiksen Apartment building. Veles, North Macedonia. 2020. “The murmurations swirled and tossed up in the sky, seemingly free of gravity and friction. I didn’t let myself enjoy the sight. Instead, I was t (...)

Ian Berry Port Erin, Isle of Man, Great Britain. 1974. “In this image, nifty footwork by a small girl is required to escape a drenching at high tide, when winter waves come roaring in from the Irish Sea to (...)

Zied Ben Romdhane Chemical waste evacuated into the sea. Chott-Essalam, Gabes, Tunisia. 2014. “Fossil landscape: The sea is withdrawn, the land is bare. Phosphate took over. Humans seed further humans. Their roots (...)

Werner Bischof Southern part of the country. USA. 1954. “1954 — Werner Bischof was able to embark on his major tour of the American South. His wife Rosellina, who was travelling with him, noted: ‘It's the begin (...)

Fort Bragg, California, USA. 2015. “Photographers are bound by the physical world, but their true region of exploration is the mind. Through pictures, we can find fresh ways of understanding our (...)

Rene Burri Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA. 1997. “In 1903, the Wright brothers made their historic flights on the beach at Kitty Hawk. On December 17, Orville piloted the first ever powered flight, which tr (...)

Robert Capa © International Center of Photography Biarritz, France. August, 1951. “The most professional American tourists call themselves foreign correspondents. For years I have been talking with and taking pictures of kings, peasants and com (...)

Cornell Capa © International Center of Photography London, England. 1952. “My two years in England were a grand adventure. I loved hearing people speak “the King’s English.” I loved the dry English sense of humor and the sporting attitude of fair (...)

Enri Canaj Sunset in the city. Athens, Greece. 2008. “While embarking on a photographic journey, every camera-holder can become compelled by a transcendental feeling. Being on the road has the power not only (...)

Chien-Chi Chang Elephant Hospital, Lampang, Thailand. 1997. “Do you dream of flying? Escaping the bonds of gravity and everyday life to soar free? This elephant toiled for years, carrying logs in the forests (...)

Sabiha Çimen A shy girl uses a palm leaf to hide her face at a Qur’an school. Istanbul, Turkey. 2018. “Things can be hidden in plain sight. A face is recognisable even to a newborn, but when that face is hidde (...)

Ernest Cole "New York City. USA. 1971. “In 1972, Bobby Womack composed the elegiac 'Across 110th Street', the theme song for the blaxploitation film of the same name. Within weeks, the film was banned in the (...)

Carolyn Drake Friday, July 10, 2020. Vallejo, California “During the months of the past year when physical escape from the house wasn’t possible, I worked in my backyard to find a creative escape, arranging ob (...)

Bieke Depoorter Sete, France. 2014. “I have always preferred photographing at night. Maybe we all experience night-time as the moments when it’s easier to hide. Yet, at the same time, I feel that night is whe (...)

Colby Deal Third Ward, Houston, Texas, USA. 2017. From the series “Beautiful, Still”. "The ongoing photographic series, Beautiful, Still, is focused on presenting a more practical representation of people of (...)

Raymond Depardon © Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

Leonard Freed | USA. New York City. 1966. Office party. Office party. New York City, USA. 1966. “Let’s dance, let’s celebrate the last day of the old year. Let’s celebrate the first day of the new year, let’s dance.” – Brigitte Freed, Estate of Leo (...)

Stuart Franklin | KENYA. 2016. Iten. Runners preparing for the Olympic Games. "Runners preparing for the Olympic Games. Iten, Kenya. 2016. “I took up running after 10 years, during the pandemic. Long-distance running has always been a way of escape for me. I ran the maratho (...)

Paul Fusco | USA. California. 1968. California Grape Strike. California Grape Strike. California. USA. 1968. “Perhaps we can bring the day when children will learn from their earliest days that being fully man and fully woman means to give one’s life to th (...)

Jean Gaumy Village of Burano, Italy. 1977.

“Face à la tempête, le vent se lève.”

Facing the storm, the wind picks up.

– Jean Gaumy © Jean Gaumy | Magnum Photos

Bruce Gilden A family walks along the crowded boardwalk. Coney Island, New York, USA. 1986. “It was a busy Sunday afternoon in Coney Island in the summer, and I had been walking in front of Nathan's, the famou (...)

Burt Glinn Monks from Mount Shichimen monastery in early morning contemplation of the mountain. Mount Fuji, Japan. 1961. “A photographer, whether on assignment, or on a journey, often faces the ultimate fear (...)

Nikos Economopoulos | CUBA. Trinidad. 2016. © Nikos Economopoulos | Magnum Photos

Elliott Erwitt Provence, France. 1955. "Photography is really very simple. The only important thing is to keep shooting. Commercial or fine art, it doesn't matter. Nothing happens when you sit at home." – Ellio (...)

Cristina Garcia Rodero Holi festival. India. 2007. “Holi is the festival of color that is celebrated in India. It commemorates the arrival of spring, the end of the harvest and the victory of good over evil. Men and wom (...)

Jim Goldberg ‘Harmonica Boys’. Athens, Greece. 2003. “In the 1990s and early 2000s, tens of thousands of Albanians migrated to Greece due to the Kosovo War, economic hardships, and political unrest. When I vis (...)

Philip Jones Griffiths George Harrison at The Beatles’ first concert. Empire Theatre, Liverpool, England. 1963. "If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there." – George Harrison. “Any Road”, Parloph (...)

Harry Gruyaert Picnic. Extremadura, Spain. 1998. “I was travelling by car in Extremadura, in Spain, when I was attracted by something that sounded like a big party going on. I parked the car and climbed up onto (...)

Ernst Haas New Mexico. USA. 1952. “Ernst Haas loved the American desert landscape of the West. When he finally was able to leave Austria after the war, his dream was to go there and explore all the landscape (...)

Gregory Halpern Sutro Baths, San Francisco, California, USA. 2015. © Gregory Halpern | Magnum Photos

Philippe Halsman Edward Villella. Teterboro Airport, New Jersey, New York, USA. 1961. “In November 1961, Halsman and Edward Villella took a drive from New York City to Teterboro Airport. Villella had become the pr (...)

Erich Hartmann Train station. Narbonne, France. October 3, 1979, "Erich and I were in Paris in the autumn of 1979 and we realized that Erich had two weeks free between long assignments. We decided to buy train (...)

Nanna Heitmann Tuva Republic. Russia. 2018. From ‘Hiding from Baba Yaga’. “For time immemorial, people have sought protection and freedom on the banks of the Yenisei River and in the adjacent wild taiga. For a l (...)

Bob Henriques The Palisades, New Jersey, USA. 1959. “While short, Bob Henriques’ photographic career was substantial. He began to make his name in the profession at the tender age of 20, selling street photogr (...)

Thomas Hoepker Roy Lichtenstein, pop artist, with painting and dot template at his studio. Southampton, New York, USA. 1982. “Like many artists, Roy Lichtenstein saw Pop Art as a way to escape traditional art f (...)

Sohrab Hura From the project Life is Elsewhere. 2008. “I was never interested in photography. In my last year of high school, 1999, my mother fell sick. I’d be locked up in my room and sometimes beaten for re (...)

David Hurn Ringo Starr on the train during the filming of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. England, Great Britain. 1964. “I was asked by director Dick Lester to be a ‘Special’ photographer on the Beatles film, ‘A Hard (...)

Richard Kalvar Hamburg, West Germany. 1973.

“‘If I stay hidden behind the bench like this no one will ever find me.’”

– Richard Kalvar © Richard Kalvar | Magnum Photos

Carl De Keyzer "Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia. 2002. “While working on my Zona project, visiting former gulags that had been repurposed as ordinary prison camps, I decided to go back for a second trip, in winter. (...)

Hiroji Kubota Kinkaku-Ji. Kyoto, Japan. November 2009. “Kinkaku-ji temple is popularly known as ‘Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ for obvious reasons, but its official name is ‘Deer Garden Temple’. It is one of (...)

Elliott Landy Bob Dylan at his home. Byrdcliffe, Woodstock, New York, USA. 1968. “In 1968 I was asked to photograph Dylan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. At that time, he was living in Woodstock, s (...)

Sergio Larrain ‘Entrada’. Valparaíso, Chile. 1963. “Valparaíso was the first port reached by ships that made the crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific via Cape Horn. It was like arriving at a space station o (...)

Herbert List ‘Eyes in the sky’. Paris, France. 1937. “By the late 1960s Herbert List’s interest in photography had waned. He declined offers for retrospective shows of his work, and escaped by devoting himsel (...)

Danny Lyon Memorial Day Run. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. 1966. It was a long time ago. Parked down in a Hyde Park alley was my motorcycle – a 1956 Triumph with a single carburetor which other University of Ch (...)

Constantine Manos Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. 2001. “This picture was made in Florida, on a hot summer’s day. I had the blazing yellow wall before me, and was waiting for something to happen. The red area of the (...)

Heathrow, London, UK. September 24, 2003. A Concorde takes off for New York in the days prior to retiring from service on 24th October, 2003. The fastest flight it made to New York was completed i (...)

The day before the US presidential election. Mexico. November 2, 2020. “This present invites us to reflect, to become aware, to dig deep into ourselves to touch this overwhelming reality. We stan (...)

Steve McCurry Rajasthan, India. 1983. "I was driving down a road between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India. It was sunny and sweltering hot at about 110°F (43°C), when the sky suddenly went dark and a p (...)

Susan Meiselas ‘Returning home from Manhattan Beach’. Little Italy, New York, USA. 1978. “In this image, three old friends huddle together having escaped on a long, hot, summer day at the beach, with no other pu (...)

Cristina de Middel Mata Atlántica forest, Brazil. 2020. From the project ‘Boa Noite Povo’ © Cristina De Middel and Bruno Morais “Buy a map, get a car and run away. Throw away the map after you realise you can use th (...)

Rafal Milach Rummu, Estonia. August 2016. “After the seizure of the Baltic states by the USSR, a maximum security prison was established in the Rummu quarry in Estonia. The area was surrounded with a wall and (...)

Wayne Miller Joan Miller at Edward Steichen's home, "Umpawaug". Redding, Connecticut. USA. 1942. “Events were moving quickly. Wayne Miller and his new wife Joan had married and were on honeymoon at E.J. Steic (...)

Inge Morath Reno, Nevada, USA. 1960. "We arrived in Reno on the evening of the 17th. Into a world so different from the loneliness of the trip, the world of a movie being started. It is difficult to describe (...)

Emin Özmen Hamit and his white pigeon. Mardin, Turkey. September 2020. “In Turkey, pigeons have a great significance in the lives of many. They are held in high esteem and their owners have been known to che (...)

Trent Parke | Parke, Trent1 Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. 1999. “When I think of escape, one thought comes straight to mind. The road trip. The great vast land that is Australia, the freedom of the open road, and t (...)

Hong Kong. 2013. “Bang in the centre of Hong Kong is the famous 'Happy Valley' racecourse. Usually, the events are held in the evening, but this time when I went, it was in daylight, in the aftern (...)

Paolo Pellegrin A plume of fireworks surrounds a reveler at the Parrandas, a December festival in the colonial town of Remedios, near Cuba's north coast. Each year, two barrios compete to stage the most impressive (...)

Gueorgui Pinkhassov Paris, France. 1997. “The most important thing is to go out into the street – to see what’s there. This is the greatest commandment of our collective’s founder, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Your prejud (...)

Mark Power Kirishima National Park, Miyazaki, Japan. April 2000. “Photography is in itself a means of escape. Whether we travel to distant lands, or simply step out from our own front door, to photograph is (...)

Hannah Price Brooklyn, New York. 2012. From the series, Cursed By Night. “The car is a good place to get away from noise and family or to take a trip to visit a friend. During the pandemic, a quick drive would (...)

Guy Le Querrec Roy Hargrove. Chemin de Ronde, Gers, France. Saturday August 9, 1997. “On August 9, 1997, for its 20th anniversary, the Jazz in Marciac festival saluted the memory of one of the founders of bebop (...)

Raghu Rai Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (the Toy Train). India. 1995. “The very thought of boarding the Toy Train begins to bring joy of an escape into the rolling heights of the mountains. Small towns on (...)

Eli Reed Montgomery, Alabama, USA. 1995. “It was a Montgomery, Alabama weekend; a hot Friday afternoon. It was ‘Miller Time’, in the words of the popular beer brand: time to zone out somewhere and relax in (...)

Lua Ribeira Grass and sky. Cordoba, Spain. 2019. Those known as honourable in town, stole from me my every brightness, cast muck on my finery in a single day, and threw me an old smock in tatters. They le (...)

George Rodger The wool souk. Tunis, Tunisia 1958 “One year after the declaration of the Republic of Tunisia, George was photographing the state’s jubilant first birthday celebrations in the capital city, Tunis. (...)

Moises Saman Giza, Greater Cairo, Egypt. 2013. “There is no respite for the energy that surrounds you in Cairo, truly one of the greatest cities in the world. The closest thing to a resting place that I found (...)

Alessandra Sanguinetti Hadil. Aida Refugee Camp, West Bank, Palestine, 2003. “I met Hadil on my first visit to Palestine, one year after Israel ended its ‘Defensive Shield’ operation, a two-month incursion wherein the I (...)

Jérôme Sessini Syrian families, mostly from Aleppo, are placed in a refugee camp in Vasariste near the Serbian-Hungarian border. Serbia. August 12, 2015. "Difficult to escape, because elsewhere becomes ‘here’ o (...)

David Seymour Young boy fleeing from advancing tanks. Port Said, Egypt. October 1956. “This photo was among the last ones taken by David ‘Chim’ Seymour before he was killed by Egyptian machine gunners at the S (...)

Marilyn Silverstone Ravi Shankar performing at a concert. To his right is tabla player Alla Rakha. Mavlankar Auditorium, Delhi, India. 1968. “Marilyn first met Ravi Shankar in 1959. She was on assignment for The New (...)

Sim Chi Yin Flying over Bulgan province, Mongolia. March 2019. “The liminal time and space of being on a flight can be a place for escape. This other reality, of being in-between places and above the clouds, (...)

W. Eugene Smith ‘Guardia Civil'. Spanish Village. 1951. © 2021 The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith “LIFE magazine staff photographer W. Eugene Smith traveled to Spain in 1950 to document repression and poverty under th (...)

Lindokuhle Sobekwa ‘Hamba Hashi Lam’. Qumbu, South Africa. 2018. “This image is part of a series called Ezilalini - The Country, which explores the area around Tsomo, a community in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. (...)

Jacob Aue Sobol Tokyo, Japan. 2007. “Though Tokyo and its people seemed unreachable, I felt drawn to the tight and confined reality of the metropolis. My feeling of isolation and loneliness was overwhelming – it (...)

Chris Steele-Perkins Harbour looking out to the Japan Sea towards China. Obama City. Japan. 2008. “I took this image on a trip to document a city that shared its name with the former American president. Residents of t (...)

Dennis Stock California, USA. 1968. “For many years California frightened me; the contrasting arenas of life shook me up. Even though I found the sun and fog, sand and Sierras which conveyed a firm image of s (...)

Mikhael Subotzky Prisoners I, Voorberg Prison, 2004 From the project Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners) “I started my career in 2004, making a series of photographs in South African prisons. At the time I thought (...)

Newsha Tavakolian Tehran, Iran. From the project ‘For the Sake of Calmness’. 2019–2020. “To daydream is to go into absence, into another world controlled only by the mind. Daydreaming is an attempt to enter a diffe (...)

Larry Towell Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua. 1985. “In 1985 I was hitchhiking through the war zone in northern Nicaragua as US-backed contras were trying to reduce newly-formed farming cooperatives to smouldering (...)

Alex Webb Comitan, Mexico. 2007. From La Calle: Photographs from Mexico. “que busca? Tal vez busca su destino. Tal vez su destino es buscar.” …what is he searching for? Perhaps he searches for his dest (...)

Patrick Zachmann Ilha do Mel, Paraná, Brazil. 2003. “For many people, escape may evoke travelling far away in order to forget their daily lives for a while. I never thought that way. To me, going abroad means dis (...)

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Over 90 signed or estate-stamped 6×6” prints by Magnum photographers are available for $100, for one week only – from 6AM PST on Monday, July 12 to Sunday, July 18, 11:59 PM PST.

The museum-quality prints are accompanied by statements from the photographers and estates, reproduced on archival-quality labels on the reverse of the print. You can see all the images in the selection – and the photographers’ corresponding stories and quotes – above, and buy them on the Magnum Shop, here.

Exploring the push and pull of breaking free, this curated selection of Magnum’s July Square Print Sale explores imagery representing the things we take solace in, and the ways we make our getaway.

For many Magnum photographers, a project offered a chance to break free from the day-to-day: to drop everything in order to go in pursuit of a story. This theme, Way for Escape, shares stories of travelling in search of an external subject, or finding answers which lie within. Inspired by Russian folklore, photographer Nanna Heitmann traced the route of the Yenisei River through Siberia to capture a village of Old Believers, followers of the 17th Century Eastern Orthodox Church.

Other photographs in this curation speak of the excitement of embarking on a long-awaited journey. Werner Bischof’s photograph of a pit-stop in the USA captures a point in time, right before his first major trip to South America. His wife Rosellina wrote, “It’s the beginning of February and we are ready: tomorrow morning we leave New York fully laden and full of plans. […] It’s going to be a fantastic trip! We’ll learn Spanish in the car, and can’t wait to reach the Mexican border.”

Some images capture the promise and anticipation of travelling to a new destination, like in Christopher Anderson’s image, where sunlit fingertips brush the window of an airplane. Harry Gruyaert’s image was inspired by a longstanding interest in airports, and the interaction between architecture and the ways people use space: from this he created succinct portraits of how we spend our time when waiting to get from one place to another. Philippe Halsman’s composition translates the lightness of airborne travel into a feeling, ballet dancer Edward Vilella leaps through the air, mirroring the shape of a stationary aircraft behind him.

For many, restoration and renewal arise from just getting ‘out there’, on the road, or amid the life of the city, feeling the breeze through your hair. Danny Lyon’s portrait of two bike riders and Ernest Cole’s snapshot of two women who walk down the street in New York City in 1971 are two images which convey the spontaneity and glee that can be present in simply existing.

Some of these images represent how we construct our own sanctuaries. Steve McCurry remembered capturing women in Rajasthan, India, experiencing a unique moment while singing a prayer for rain amid a dust storm: “I got out of the car, ran across a field and photographed them moments before the storm disappeared. Then the sun immediately came out, as if nothing had ever happened.” In contrast to this rural scene, Martin Parr’s photograph from a bustling Hong Kong race course shows an individual immersed in observation, outfitted with binoculars and newspaper. Another image, by Cristina De Middel and Bruno Morais shows a young tree swaddled in a translucent sheet. Their joint project examines the ways that the natural world, and our conception of escape as a whole, is crafted for human consumption.

While for some, escape entails adventure, for others it’s rest. Elliott Erwitt’s image of a man and boy — perhaps his grandson — cycling along a tree-lined avenue in Provence, France conveys a leisurely peacefulness. There is a tranquility to be found in the contemplation of a peaceful vista, as captured in Gregory Halpern’s photograph of an oil painting in progress at Sutro Baths in San Francisco. In Alec Soth’s image, Cammy the cockatiel enjoys the view from her window in Salt Lake City, perhaps imagining an alternate life for herself beyond the glass.

Escape also invokes the places, people, and associated conflicts which we seek to move away from. W. Eugene Smith’s most famous photo essay saw him documenting life in Spain after the civil war. Shortly after making his well-known image of the Guardia Civil, Franco’s brutal military police, Smith stated his impatience, to his interpreter, to “get the hell out of here”. In David Hurn’s image, The Beatles’ Ringo Starr peeks furtively at adoring crowds outside the window of his train carriage where he tries to take refuge. Khalik Allah’s images, from his series made at the corner of 125th Street and Lexington, New York, aim to capture the inner light of the people he meets there. His photograph highlights how beauty transcends the material conditions of homelessness and addiction that these individuals struggle with.

This collection of 90+ prints is available for one week only in this format. It represents the breadth and variety not only of the practices and outlooks within Magnum’s membership, but also of what photography can convey and capture.

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- Written by Jade Chao · Jul 12, 2021

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Way for Escape: The Magnum Square Print Sale

Works of Imagination: The Magnum Square Print Sale, in partnership with Aperture

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Way for Escape: The Magnum Square Print Sale

Watch Now: Beyond Magnum

Solidarity: The Magnum Square Print Sale, supporting the NAACP, in collaboration with Vogue

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