The Magnum Digest: December 20, 2019

Chuck Coma Comes Home

Cristie Thompson’s feature – a commission for The Marshall Project, NPR, and Mother Jones – focuses on Chuck Coma, a military veteran with PTSD who was jailed for armed robbery and then assaulted by his cell-mate in prison. Left with life-changing injuries, Coma’s hard earned freedom is, as the article says, ‘not so free’. Coma is but one of the thousands of prisoners assaulted each years in federal prison’s in the US. Peter van Agtmael’s photographs accompany the investigation, which you can read here on The Marshall Project, here on Mother Jones, and here on NPR.

TIME’s Photos of 2019

Six Magnum photographers feature in TIME Magazine’s run down of the Top 100 Photos of 2019. Peter Van Agtmael’s images from a Trump rally and his documentation of the grieving family of a US soldier killed in Afghanistan, Moises Saman’s images of Kurdish fighters and refugees, Christopher Anderson’s informal portrait of French premier Emmanuel Macron, Newsha Tavakolian’s photograph of a Yazidi boy abducted by ISIS, an image from Patrick Zachmann’s extensive work in the ruins of Notre Dame, and Lorenzo Meloni’s photograph of government-aligned fighters in Tripoli all feature in the list.

You can see all 100 images here, on TIME.

The Guardian‘s Photobooks of the Year features Sohrab Hura, Gregory Halpern, and Dennis Stock

Sean O’Hagan’s Guardian list of the best photobooks of 2019 features three Magnum photographers’ monographs. Sohrab Hura’s The Coast – Winner of the 2019 Paris Photo & Aperture Photobook of the Year Awards – is included, alongside Gregory Halpern’s Omaha Sketchbook, and the Reissue of Dennis Stock’s portrait of America’s countercultural west-coast heyday – California Trip. You can see the full list on The Guardian.

You can learn more about The Coast,Omaha Sketchbook, and California Trip on Magnum. Signed copies of The Coast and Omaha Sketchbook are available on the Magnum Shop.

The Coast, continued

Sean O’Hagan also featured The Coast in his BJP run-down of 2019’s photographic highlights. The book was also included in LensCulture, 1000 Words Magazine, and The Financial Times’ lists of photobooks of 2019, as well as being covered this week on Amercian Suburb X and Art Reveiw. You can read those two features here, and here.

Moises Saman’s photograph from Greece featured on The Guardian

The Guardian’s list of inspiring, hopeful images of the year included Moises Saman’s photograph of smiling young refugees disembarking from a boat on Lesbos, Greece. You can see the full article here.

Create Jobs workshop on BBC

The work of eight participants on Magnum and Create Jobs recent Creativity Works: Visual Storytelling workshop has been featured on the BBC. The seven-week course saw industry experts, and Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura, working with 24 young photographers who were set the brief of ‘What is Your London?’ to react to with a final project. You can see the selection of eight projects here, on the BBC.