'Golden rock'. The Shwe Pye Daw, a holy place. Kyaiktiyo, Burma, 1994. © Steve McCurry / Magnum Photos.
Children play among the wreckage of the D Day invasion. Normandy, France, 1947. © David Seymour / Magnum Photos. “David ‘Chim’ Seymour returned to Europe on an assignment for 'This Week' magazine in April 1947. He travelled to the Normandy beaches in order to revisit the location where the Allied D-Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944. Chim’s particular interest in how the young dealt with and reacted to years of conflict led him to these kids playing happily on the beach near the ominous steel shell of an abandoned fortification. The four children seem deeply engrossed in their imaginative plan to make a sand castle or some other creation, somehow ignoring what is hanging over their heads. The terror of D-Day lingers over this image of children and calm weather, with clouds softening the sunshine." – Ben Shneiderman, nephew of David “Chim” Seymour
The Arrival. From the series, 'Santa Barbara'. 2018. © Diana Markosian / Aperture. “My family arrived in America in 1996. The Soviet Union had long collapsed, and by then, so had my parents’ marriage. We had spent nights in our tiny Moscow apartment watching the 1980s American soap opera, 'Santa Barbara'. Full of sunlit palm trees and wealthy Californians, it was the first American show to be broadcast in post-Soviet Russia. For my mom, 'Santa Barbara' represented a dream, something far away from what my family’s life had become. Inspired by the show, she became a mail-order bride, taking my brother and me to America with her. This is where the story begins: the idea of touching something that felt untouchable.” - Diana Markosian
Subway platform. New York City. USA.1980. © Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos. "I took this image on the elevated M Line at the Myrtle Avenue-Wyckoff Avenue stop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, as part of my Subway series. I saw this wonderful color-play between the two women – one wore a yellow dress with green shoes, the other was in red. As I was getting ready to click the shutter, the wind caught the dress of the women in yellow. It wasn't blowing it up around her knees like a Marilyn Monroe picture, it was just fluffing it. It was a delicate moment.” – Bruce Davidson
Butungaola. From the series, 'The Afronauts'. 2011. © Cristina de Middel / Magnum Photos. “It is very complicated for me to write about imagination because I feel I need to define it and then fall into an insurmountable inconsistency. Many times I have been asked how I come up with ideas and I blame it on imagination, so I guess this is the closest I will get to a definition: imagination is what makes ideas. But these ideas eventually become a reality and that reality eventually triggers imagination again. I think this threesome between Imagination, Ideas, and Reality is the philosopher’s stone for the change we all know is needed. The perfect formula for bringing about change does not exist, but trying over and over should be the path toward it. The image is from the series 'The Afronauts': a project that came about when I imagined something that had already happened in reality.” – Cristina de Middel
French poet, artist, and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau with actress Ricki Soma, and dancer, Leo Coleman. New York City. USA.1949 © Philippe Halsmann / Magnum Photos.
© Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos.
© Stephen Tayo / Aperture.

Magnum's final Square Print Sale of 2020

19 October 2020

A collaboration between Magnum and Aperture, Works of Imagination is the final Square Print Sale of the year. Running between 19-26 October, during this period, over 100 archival-quality prints, signed by the photographers or estate-stamped by the estates, will be available for US$100.

The theme of the sale, Works of Imagination, highlights a collection of works from disparate storytelling and artistic practices: works of fact and fiction with the potential to inspire our social and artistic imagination.

Children play among the wreckage of the D Day invasion. Normandy, France, 1947. © David Seymour / Magnum Photos.
“David ‘Chim’ Seymour returned to Europe on an assignment for 'This Week' magazine in April 1947. He travelled to the Normandy beaches in order to revisit the location where the Allied D-Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944. Chim’s particular interest in how the young dealt with and reacted to years of conflict led him to these kids playing happily on the beach near the ominous steel shell of an abandoned fortification.
The four children seem deeply engrossed in their imaginative plan to make a sand castle or some other creation, somehow ignoring what is hanging over their heads. The terror of D-Day lingers over this image of children and calm weather, with clouds softening the sunshine. — Children play among the wreckage of the D Day invasion. Normandy, France, 1947. © David Seymour / Magnum Photos. “David ‘Chim’ Seymour returned to Europe on an assignment for 'This Week' magazine in April 1947. He travelled to the Normandy beaches in order to revisit the location where the Allied D-Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944. Chim’s particular interest in how the young dealt with and reacted to years of conflict led him to these kids playing happily on the beach near the ominous steel shell of an abandoned fortification. The four children seem deeply engrossed in their imaginative plan to make a sand castle or some other creation, somehow ignoring what is hanging over their heads. The terror of D-Day lingers over this image of children and calm weather, with clouds softening the sunshine." – Ben Shneiderman, nephew of David “Chim” Seymour

Some key artworks on sale include pieces from ForFreedoms (Aperture), The WideAwakes (Aperture), Nan Goldin (Aperture), Dennis Stock (Magnum), Bruce Davidson (Magnum), David Benjamin Sherry (Aperture), Elliot Erwitt (Magnum), Hassan Hajjij (Aperture), Stephen Tayo (Aperture), Steve McCurry (Magnum), Diana Markosian (Aperture), David Seymour, (Magnum), Yael Martinez (Magnum), among many others.

The Arrival. From the series, 'Santa Barbara'. 2018. © Diana Markosian / Aperture. “My family arrived in America in 1996. The Soviet Union had long collapsed, and by then, so had my parents’ marriage. We had spent nights in our tiny Moscow apartment watching the 1980s American soap opera, 'Santa Barbara'. Full of sunlit palm trees and wealthy Californians, it was the first American show to be broadcast in post-Soviet Russia. For my mom, 'Santa Barbara' represented a dream, something far away from what my family’s life had become. Inspired by the show, she became a mail-order bride, taking my brother and me to America with her. This is where the story begins: the idea of touching something that felt untouchable.”
- Diana Markosian — The Arrival. From the series, 'Santa Barbara'. 2018. © Diana Markosian / Aperture. “My family arrived in America in 1996. The Soviet Union had long collapsed, and by then, so had my parents’ marriage. We had spent nights in our tiny Moscow apartment watching the 1980s American soap opera, 'Santa Barbara'. Full of sunlit palm trees and wealthy Californians, it was the first American show to be broadcast in post-Soviet Russia. For my mom, 'Santa Barbara' represented a dream, something far away from what my family’s life had become. Inspired by the show, she became a mail-order bride, taking my brother and me to America with her. This is where the story begins: the idea of touching something that felt untouchable.” - Diana Markosian

About the prints

Magnum Square Prints are printed on 6×6” (15.24×15.24 cm) archival paper; image size is 5.5” (14 cm) on the longest side. Images will not be cropped, but will instead have white borders. They are not editioned by quantity, but editioned by time, as these items will not be made available outside the sale window. The images in each sale are always different, and will never be available in this format again.

Work of Imagination, Magnum’s Square Print Sale in partership with Aperture, runs from Monday, 19 October, 9AM EST to Sunday, 25 October, 6PM EST.

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