Photo London
9-12 September 2021
Magnum’s presentation will reveal insights into culture, social issues, humanism, and history.
Oscillating between artistic vision and documentary investigation, the photographers on view have captured people, cities and landscapes around the globe, chronicling political events and moments of humanity.
For further information, please contact: gallery@magnumphotos.com
Magnum is honoured to announce its return to Photo London 2021 staged at Somerset House from 9 to 12 September 2021. For this edition of the fair, Magnum booth (G26) will feature vintage, posthumous and modern prints by Antoine d’Agata, Eve Arnold, Bruno Barbey, Matt Black, René Burri, Robert Capa, Ernest Cole, Bruce Davidson, Raymond Depardon, Bruce Gilden, Harry Gruyaert, Philippe Halsman, Hiroji Kubota, Sergio Larrain, Marc Riboud, Sim Chi-Yin, and Alex Webb.
“What do you hang on the walls of your mind?” Eve Arnold is known to have asked. This enigmatic quote spotlights photographers’ roles as both thinkers and artists and provides the inspiration for Magnum’s presence at Photo London. This year’s curatorial framework resonates deeply with today’s politics while also reflecting Magnum photographers’ singular visions as interpreters of world events.
Magnum’s presentation will reveal insights into culture, social issues, humanism, and history. Oscillating between artistic vision and documentary investigation, the photographers on view have captured people, cities and landscapes around the globe, chronicling historical and political events and moments of humanity. Philippe Halsman’s phenomenal vintage portrait of Winston Churchill takes centre stage in the booth.
Three stunning vintage prints by Magnum founder Robert Capa from 1936 and 1938 depict Republican soldiers on the Aragon front, here by capturing the brutal realities of the Spanish Civil War.
Eve Arnold’s iconic portrait of Human Rights Activist Malcolm X, taken in Chicago in 1962, and Hiroji Kubota’s Black Panthers’ protest in the snow, also shot in Chicago in 1969, will be in dialogue with a poignant portrait by Bruce Davidson of two young people, shot in the streets of Harlem, New York, in 1966, an area of the city where the Civils Rights Movement took shape.
Also on view at the fair in London will be Marc Riboud’s 1967 legendary photograph showing an American girl confronting the National Guard outside the Pentagon during the anti-Vietnam march.
Recently acquired by Tate, Ernest Cole’s oeuvre chronicled the horrors of apartheid. In 1966, he fled the Republic of South Africa to the USA, where he concentrated on street photography in primarily urban settings. On view at Photo London will be Cole’s vintage photograph ‘Newspapers are her carpet, fruit crates her chairs and table’, 1960-1966, depicting an interior scene from the legendary body of work, House of Bondage.
Known for his graphic and often confrontational close-ups made using flash, Bruce Gilden’s images have a degree of intimacy and directness that have become his signature. A series of his NYC shots exploring similar observations on humanity will be highlights of the booth.
René Burri’s exceptional vintage photograph will be another highlight of the presentation. The composition features a family from Nordeste, Brazil, 1960, observing the city of Brasilia on inauguration day. The background features the grand and innovative architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and contrasts with the workers’ position in the space.
A vibrant, lighter and poetic direction will also be examined on the stand through the work of Harry Gruyaert’s stunning view of County Kerry, Ireland, 1988. Harry Gruyaert retrospective, Helmond, Netherlands, is running until the 19th of September 2021. Alongside Gruyaert’s beautiful landscape scenes will be the late Bruno Barbey’s rare Cibachrome and digital prints from Portugal in 1993, which are included in Passages, the catalogue of Bruno Barbey’s career-spanning retrospective exhibition of his work. Two of Alex Webb’s vibrant scenes from Haiti and Mexico will also be on view.
Initially commissioned more than 40 years ago by The Sunday Times, Raymond Depardon’s Glasgow series depicts people living in deprived conditions in an area affected by the decline of industrialism. Two works by Raymond Depardon from this iconic body of work will be presented at this year's fair.
Rooted in today's crisis, Antoine d'Agata's Virus series epitomises the world's concerns with Covid-19. From the first day of lockdown following the outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020, d’Agata, who has previously been influenced by artist Francis Bacon, roamed the streets of Paris with a thermal camera to record the impacts of the virus that turned the city into a dystopian theatre of wandering souls.