Celebrating 10 Years of Square Prints

In 2014, led by Martin Fuchs and Gideon Jacobs, Magnum staff, photographers, and Estates decided to launch an experiment. Inspired by the growing popularity of the social media app Instagram, and its unique square-only posts, they decided to organize a one-week sale of 6×6” square prints, bringing the same ubiquitous square images to a physical product, designed to be collected and displayed, much like one’s own Instagram feed. 

Magnum was at the time caught up in the transition to the digital space; undergoing the daunting task of digitizing the entire 67-year-old archive and building its own online presence for the very first time, finding ways to fuse its renowned legacy with its contemporary and evolving identity. It wasn’t until 2016 that the agency launched its current storytelling website, so during this period, the agency was entirely reliant on blog-like formats and social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

The 10th-anniversary Sale is now on until Sunday, May 5 at 11:59 EDT, with 85 limited-edition, signed or stamped prints from the Magnum archive. Shop the sale here. 

Named the pragmatic “Square Print Sale,” the week-long experiment was Magnum’s foray into offering products directly to its growing online audience. The motivation behind the experiment was twofold. Firstly, could they find a way to build community and allow members of the public to connect and engage with Magnum online, and secondly, could they create something tangible to be shared from Magnum photographers and estates directly to this global audience? 

At the core was the product itself; a limited-edition 6×6” print of an image from the Magnum archive, available online for one week only, and selected by the photographer or Estate. Each print was to be signed, or stamped by the Estate, and included an exclusive story or commentary from the artist on the back of the print — a collector’s item but offered at a more accessible price point.

The sale, which featured early and new members of the cooperative, was a roaring success. Today, ten years later, the Sale lives on, and both product and concept have stood the test of time. Yet what began as an Instagram-inspired experiment has expanded and evolved over the past decade, becoming a bi-annual creative exercise and intense collaborative effort for Magnum photographers, Estates, and staff alike.

Becoming a Cooperative-Wide Creative Exercise

The first significant evolution in the Sale’s history was in 2017, with the introduction of themes. For the first two years image selections were made collaboratively between photographer or Estate and Magnum staff. Selected images were often ones that stood out from the photographer’s archive or had historical or cultural relevance according to the year or month of the sale. On occasion, lesser-known images would be selected, providing a rare insight into the photographer’s own, personal selection of preferred or notable images.

Yet in June 2017, to celebrate Magnum’s 70th anniversary, the theme “Closer” was set. Riffing off the famous Robert Capa quote, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” the theme was set as part of a creative exercise for Magnum photographers and estates to investigate the legacy of one of their cooperative’s co-founders, and how it had perhaps inspired or influenced their own practice. Alongside one of Capa’s famed images of the D-Day landings, Eli Reed selected a close-up of Rosa Parks from 1995, 40 years after the launch of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, while the Estate of George Rodger selected an image of Capa himself, cigarette in mouth, during the Allied liberation of Italy in 1943. 

And from then on, most Square Print Sales included a theme, transforming the image selection process into more of a creative exercise across the cooperative. Past themes have occasionally been loose, such as “Obsession,” or “Turning Points,” which have opened doors to different perspectives and visual ways of interpreting specific themes. Others have related more to Magnum itself, or the history of photography. The last sale, which took place in October 2023, was given the theme “Written by Light,” and was both a response to the growing concern around the presence of artificially generated images and an exploration of what photography, in its simplest form, meant to them today.

Expanding Beyond the Magnum Archive

The second significant evolution in the Sale’s history was the introduction of partnerships with photographic or journalistic organizations and institutions, in which photographers and artists external to Magnum would join the exercise, each providing an image from their own practice. Opening the door to external photographers helped expand image curations beyond the Magnum archive to include historical and contemporary voices from across the industry, and across the globe. 

The first of its kind was with Aperture in 2017. A roster of photographers selected by the publisher participated in the project alongside Magnum photographers, pushing the number of available images to over 100 in one sale.

The partnership proved to be a success, and Aperture went on to feature in several sales over the next few years, including On the Horizon in October 2021, which featured prints from the likes of Nan Goldin, Jamel Shabazz, Todd Hido, and Mary Ellen Mark. Over the years, Magnum also went on to explore partnerships with Vogue, the World Press Photo Foundation, and The Everyday Project, a non-for-profit and global photography network that was born as Everyday Africa in 2012, and which featured the work of photographers such as Wissam Nassar and Malin Fezehai.

And in April 2023, Magnum took the experiment a step further. Instead of partnering with a specific institution, the cooperative’s photographers and Estates decided to reach out directly to their connections and contacts, in a sale titled Magnum and Friends, which brought on board the likes of Roger Deakins, Alfredo Jaar, the Estates of Larry Sultan, and Weegee.

Building Community, Online and Offline

Over the past few years, a new physical dimension to the online Sale has started to gain prominence, with pop-up shows exhibiting the prints taking place during the week-long sale. During the sale last October, which was organized in partnership with the World Press Photo Foundation, a number of prints were exhibited during the international photography fair, Unseen Amsterdam. In parallel, in-person signing events took place with Lúa Ribeira and Martin Parr in London, and Instagram Live discussions popped up between the participating photographers; such as a conversation with Gregory Halpern and World Press Photo Finalist Hannah Reyes Morales, as they discussed how the camera became a tool for them to connect with the world.

Fable, the 10th-Anniversary Sale

The next Square Print Sale is set to take place from April 29 to May 5, and in many ways, is the most experimentative and ambitious Sale in its history. This time, Magnum Photos is partnering with Granta Magazine, a leading literary publication, to explore the perennial art of storytelling through a combination of word and image. Three writers Sara Baume, Derek Owusu and Victoria Adukwei Bulley, will each receive a selection of images around the theme “Fable,” and are invited to write a short story or poem inspired by this selection. 

“The Square Print Sale has always been, fundamentally, a text and image project,” explains Michael Sargeant, Global Head of Digital Projects and  E-commerce at Magnum, referring to the addition of photographer statements and stories on the back of each print. “For this sale, we really wanted to push this concept to new realms and see what can be made of a selection of seemingly disparate images under one large theme. It’s incredibly exciting to be able to invite different voices in the creative world to interpret photographs from the Magnum archive.”

The Sale will also see community events popping up in New York, London, and Paris during the week of the sale, offering the rare opportunity to purchase Square Prints in person and participate in live signings with the photographers.

“Each Square Print event is a colossal team effort between Magnum staff, photographers, estates, partners, and external providers,” Sargeant adds. “What our online audience sees is a week-long, ephemeral sale, but for us, it takes between four and six months to make each one happen. We’re going back and forth with between 80 and 130 photographers and estates to select and prepare the image, prepare the text, and all the logistics that go on in terms of hosting an online sale.” 

“At the heart of what we want to do is to create space for interesting dialogues and stories, which is why we’ve seen so many evolutions within the sale and how it functions over the past decade,” he continues. “Now, we’re shifting more towards prioritizing public engagement, both online and offline, so that the community can connect more with the curation, the stories, the photographers and estates themselves.”

Fable, in partnership with Granta magazine, will mark the 23rd Square Print Sale, adding a further 80-odd images to the over 1000 that have featured in the sale so far. “What’s amazing to see now, after a decade of its existence, is that the vast array of work featured accounts for only a tiny fraction of the full Magnum archive,” Sargeant adds. “It’s just a snapshot of the depth of work made by the photographers, and yet people who have been engaged with the sale from the beginning will have been able to build up strong collections from various photographers — Alex Webb, Cristina de Middel, even the Capas, for example. I started collecting Matt Black’s Square Prints, which have often featured an image from American Geography. It’s brought me closer to that project and gave me an avenue to support it directly as it was still ongoing.”

“The Square Print Sale has been hugely important for Magnum,” he concludes. “The photography industry has changed exponentially since the cooperative’s early days and we’ve faced a lot of challenges as the unique entity that we are. The internet, and especially our online audience has helped us grow, adapt, and navigate the changing landscape, and without the support, we may not be where we are today.”  

The spring Magnum Square Print Sale, titled “Fable,” and organized in partnership with Granta Magazine, will take place from April 29 to May 5. Find out more here.