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Magnum’s 2018 Pictures of the Year

A review of the agency's photos of the year, edited by Magnum president, Thomas Dworzak

Magnum Photographers

Peter van Agtmael On the set of the movie "The Outpost" about the Battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan in 2009. Bulgaria. 2018. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Christopher Anderson Flight over France. France. 2017. © Christopher Anderson | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry A restaurant on the road between Apartado and Santa Marta where a man studies a hand-written piece of paper. Colombia. South America. 2018. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Jonas Bendiksen A man crosses a crack in the ice in the inner harbor of Ilulissat. The town is a major hub for Greenlandic fisheries. Many young people, especially women, move to the capital city of Nuuk, or abroa (...)
Matt Black Orange harvest. Nearly all of California's 500,000 farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. Their future and the future of California agriculture is in doubt amid recent immigration crackdowns. (...)
Enri Canaj A disabled Neo-Nazi supporter seen at Neo-Nazi counter-rally. Ostritz, Saxony. Germany. April, 2018. © Enri Canaj | Magnum Photos
Chien-Chi Chang 48-year-old Sunang Diamante's son To Diamante was shot dead on December 3, 2017. She and survivors of the massacre in Datalbonglangon community of Ned in Lake Sebu have sought temporary in an NGO-f (...)
Carolyn Drake An image from the ongoing project "Knit Club,” in which a group of women in Water Valley, Mississippi, are working with the photographer to question what female looks like in their small town. Wate (...)
Bieke Depoorter Agata. Beirut, Lebanon. August 3, 2018. © Bieke Depoorter | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Suburbs of Seoul. KOFIC Namyangju Cinema Studios where the JSA Joint Security Zone of Panmunjeom in the DMZ Demilitarized Zone between South and North Korea has been recreated for a movie set. Sinc (...)
Nikos Economopoulos Granada. Nicaragua. 2018. © Nikos Economopoulos | Magnum Photos
Stuart Franklin Indigenous land rights. Young Penan boy with an injured deer at the Long Jaik longhouse near the Muran Dam. It's a Penan longhouse where Mutu, the headman, is in a legal dispute for land rights wi (...)
Jean Gaumy Mission BeBEST International Arctic Laboratory. Landscape during a storm. Young Sund fjord. Greenland. May, 2018. © Jean Gaumy | Magnum Photos
Jim Goldberg Boy Building Houses. Temporary Shelter for the migrant caravan. Irapuato. Mexico. 2018. © Jim Goldberg | Magnum Photos
Gregory Halpern Beverley Caristo with son. Taos, New Mexico. USA. 2018. © Gregory Halpern | Magnum Photos
David Hurn Thousands of women of all ages marched together through Cardiff in celebration of women winning the right to vote. Mothers with babies were joined by older generations - some in mobility scooters. (...)
Richard Kalvar Avenue de Clichy. Paris, France. 75018. 2018 © Richard Kalvar | Magnum Photos
Steve McCurry Race Day, Tapati Festival. Easter Island. Chile. February, 2018. © Steve McCurry | Magnum Photos
Lorenzo Meloni A girl in a car looking at Ali. Mosul. Iraq. 28/03/2018. © Lorenzo Meloni | Magnum Photos
Susan Meiselas Murals alongside the Masaya Highway. Managua. Nicaragua. 2018. © Susan Meiselas | Magnum Photos
Cristina de Middel Rubens, 28 years old. Trainer. Single. He pays for prostitutes 3 to 4 times a month and pays from 5 to 20 USD. His first time was when he was 22 the day of his his best friend´s birthday. He keeps (...)
Diana Markosian My family arrived to America in 1996. My mother described it as the arrival to nowhere, with the hope of going somewhere. USA. 2018. © Diana Markosian | Magnum Photos
Emin Özmen Children play in the water, on the roof of a partially sunken mosque in Savasan. The village (only accessible by boat) attracts all the attention. More than 200,000 visitors come every year to adm (...)
Martin Parr Henleaze Lake. Bristol. England. GB. 2018. © Martin Parr | Magnum Photos
Gueorgui Pinkhassov “The polarity of a window glass Lends the possibility of seeing both ways. The reflection yields to observation, which bears the rest But what is the starting point? The birth of matter, (...)
Gilles Peress Sarajevo. Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2018. © Gilles Peress | Magnum Photos
Mark Power Fire in a former Elementary school. Pearsall. Texas. USA. 14th January 2018. © Mark Power | Magnum Photos
Lúa Ribeira Dave outside the park. Bristol. England. GB. 2017. © Lúa Ribeira | Magnum Photos
Jérôme Sessini A man high on heroin leans against an abandoned storefront in Kensington Avenue. United States of America. Philadelphia. May 26, 2018. © Jérôme Sessini | Magnum Photos
Alec Soth Paunice Savage and Patrick Savage. Harlem, NYC. USA. 2017. © Alec Soth | Magnum Photos
Chris Steele-Perkins Scare crows in Kami Goto lanscapes. Japan. © Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos
Alex Webb Five Points area. Atlanta, GA. USA. 2018. © Alex Webb | Magnum Photos
Sim Chi Yin Hatches over silos which in the 1970s held missiles meant to shoot down incoming Soviet warheads, North Dakota. / A missile field in rural North Dakota near the Canadian border which held Sprint an (...)
Patrick Zachmann New excavations. Professor Massimo Osanna, director of Pompeii archeological parc showing a woman painted in a fresco recently discovered by the archeologists. "House of the garden" (Casa del jardi (...)

The great diversity of practices and the variety of subject matter tackled by Magnum photographers around the world is succinctly conveyed here, in the collective’s images of the year. 

Magnum president Thomas Dworzak – who oversaw the above selection – touched on this breadth of vision in his note which accompanies the collection, “From the intimacy of a bedroom, an evening at the shores of the Mediterranean, to the big issues of our time: the turmoil in the Middle East, the fragmented United States, migration, pollution – it‘s been a pleasure to go through my colleagues efforts to somehow try to make sense of it all.”

At the core of the Magnum collective’s nature is its myriad interpretations of, and approaches to, photography. As the agency co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson said, ‘Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world.’ This sense of collective curiosity is as evident in 2018 as it was in the agency’s earliest years. 

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