Feed Your Imagination With These Breathtaking—And Affordable—Photographs
Kathryn Romeyn
·7 min read
There could be no more apropos theme for Magnum Photos’ latest Square Print sale than one that celebrates, through a visual lens, the idea of inspiration and imagination. Titled “Works of Imagination,” the collection of more than 100 archival-quality prints, each signed by the photographer or estate-stamped, represents a curation of photography made over decades in genres of both fact and fiction, reality and escape. The sale is in partnership with not-for-profit foundation Aperture.
“The range this fall is extraordinary,” says Magnum CEO Caitlin Hughes of the assemblage that includes artwork by the likes of Nan Goldin, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Steve McCurry, and Cristina de Middel. “Each piece has its own story and all relate in some way to our theme. Imagination for me is so much more than escapism, it is the power to dream, the very beginning of something new.”
Taken as part of his Subway series, Bruce Davidson’s image of the elevated M line at the Myrtle Avenue-Wyckoff Avenue stop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 1980, was a “delicate moment” caught in the wind.
The museum-quality works, each printed on six-by-six-inch archival paper and five and a half inches on the longest side, are being offered for $100, for just one week. Pieces of history are included in the form of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Josephine Baker, and Bob Dylan, the latter captured on infrared film by Elliott Landy, alongside fantastical and otherworldly images like Steve McCurry’s teetering bolder. There are prints that feel like harsh, haunting realities, others that freeze a beautiful moment in time, and some that feel hopeful, such as the first iPhone photo to receive a World Press Photo Award—Malin Fezehai’s capture of an Eritrean wedding.
A few feel wonderfully trippy, ethereal and fresh, such as Mikhael Subotzky’s 2006 Samuel (standing). Vaalkoppies (Beaufort West Rubbish Dump). Says the artist and square-print collector of the accessible format, “It allows photographers to mine their back catalogue for images that are lesser known, or even to reinterpret iconic images from a different point of view. It thus becomes an interesting creative tool that complements the more formal and structured mediums of books and exhibitions.”
David Benjamin Sherry’s work the last decade has centered around the western national forests and national parks, paying homage to the legacy of Ansel Adams, Carleton Watkins, and the like, and building on it. Like others, Sunrise on Mesquite Flat Dunes, Death Valley, California, 2013, was shot on an 8-by-10-inch large-format film camera, with color added during the printing process. “I’m not interested in depicting the way the landscape appears in reality, but rather its potential for emotional resonance,” he says. “For me, color is a conduit to making those feelings visible, beginning a radical, queer new chapter to the otherwise colonial, heteronormative history of the medium.”
Many of the prints impart a sense of intimacy that is currently so foreign, and serve to remind us of the greater world, off-limits as it might be right now. There are psychedelic portraits of America’s national monuments, counter-narratives from North Africa and glimpses of daily life in Lagos. To De Middel, whose The Afronauts series image Butungaola is on sale, “it is very exciting to see people starting their collections and understanding that the art world is not purely an elite pastime. It began as a beautiful experiment that is growing for everyone, because it’s a win-win for all involved.” Adds Aperture executive director Chris Boot, “We believe photography to be vital to society and contemporary culture—more than ever during these challenging times.”
Feed Your Imagination With These Breathtaking—And Affordable—Photographs
Photographer Bob Henriques’s 1960 image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the podium delivering a speech goes along with a quote from the inspiring leader. “Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.”
Cristina de Middel describes her series The Afronauts as “a project that came about when I imagined something that had already happened in reality.” To her, “imagination is what makes ideas.” This one is called Butungaola.
Children play among the wreckage of the D Day invasion is the result of David Seymour’s assignment for This Week magazine in 1947, in Normandy, exploring the aftermath for young people of years of conflict. He found kids playing imaginatively under an ominous, abandoned fortification.
Elliott Erwitt, who took Wyoming, USA in 1954, said, “Good photography is not about ‘Zone Printing’ or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It’s just about seeing. You either see, or you don’t see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Noticing more.”
In 1968, Bob Dylan was photographed by Elliott Landy for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, at his home in Woodstock. According to Landy, “Although he was comfortable with me, he was nervous in front of the camera, and his uneasiness made it difficult for me.”
Knowing that the sight of veiled women riding motorbikes would be jarring from a Western perspective, Hassan Hajjaj shot Kesh Angels in Marrakech in 2010, naming them Kesh for Marrakech, and taking Angels from the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. It’s meant to be, in his words, “a still from a movie you haven’t seen yet.”
“Smoke and mirrors, fantasy and real life, are a magician’s tools to create illusions; but photographers can also use those tools,” says photographer Sabiha Çimen of her image, Qur’an School students having fun with a pink smoke bomb at a picnic event, in Istanbul, Turkey.
Proceeds from the sale of this print, Ballet in Lagos, Nigeria, by Stephen Tayo, will benefit the Leap of Ballet Dance Academy in Lagos. It’s an organization founded in 2017 by Daniel Owoseni Ajala that gives students opportunities to pursue their dreams. They are currently attending classes after school at Ajala’s apartment, where he pushes aside furniture and puts a vinyl sheet on the ground.
Photo: Stephen Tayo / Aperture
Werner Bischof’s Streams was taken in 1941, when he was 25 years old, in Zurich, Switzerland, and is a counterpoint to the horrors and destruction around him.
This image, titled Carla. La Sabana, Acapulco, Mexico, is part of a project on resilience, says Yael Martínez. It “brings together images of people whose lives have been touched by violence at some point, people for whom confrontation with fear, the night, and also time has been a battle that seemed endless.”
The Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo Pagoda in Myanmar is visited by pilgrims from around the country, burnished with prayers and gold leaf, says Stephen McCurry, the photographer, who took the image in 1994. “According to legend, a single strand of hair from the Buddha’s head keeps the rock balanced precariously on the edge of a precipice.”
Photo: Steve McCurry / Aperture
“Work of Imagination,” Magnum’s Square Print Sale in partnership with Aperture runs from Monday, October 19, 9 a.m. ET, to Sunday, October 25, 6 p.m. ET.
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