Beginning at 8AM EST on Monday 28 October, and running for five days until midnight on 01 November, the public will be able to purchase signed or estate-stamped, museum quality prints by the world’s leading photographic artists, for only $100. This opportunity comes once each year, this time bringing together works centred around the theme ‘Hidden’.
Celebrating photography’s function as a vehicle for showing what is neither accessible nor visible to the majority of us, each of the 100 images shed light on the things around us that are otherwise overlooked. From remote societies to elite fraternities, and isolated places to objects so common we don’t stop to look at them, the photographs reveal hidden things, places and lives.
In some cases, it is the images themselves that are hidden; Thomas Hoepker has shared an unseen portrait of Muhammed Ali. On hearing about the ‘hidden’ theme, Hoepker “grabbed some folders of old negatives, and unexpectedly found another Muhammad Ali picture that I had totally overlooked until today.” Other images obscure or conceal; Susan Meiselas photographs a masked rebel in Nicaragua, and Don McCullin portrays an anonymous protester demonstrating against the Cuban Missile Crisis in Whitehall, London in 1962.
The interpretations of the theme are vast; Olivia Arthur photographs the well-oiled legs of a sunbather. To the viewer, her body is hidden, but to the subject, the piles of rubble beneath the boardwalk on which she lies are what is obscured. In another image, Ernest Cole’s camera is the hidden object. His 1965 photograph of miners during a group medical examination is believed to have been shot by Cole after he smuggled his camera into the mine inside his packed lunch. “No one has ever been able to explain how he deceived the mine’s security,” says a spokesperson for the Ernest Cole Estate. “Former President of South Africa, and Secretary-General of the National Union Of Mineworkers, Kgalema Motlanthe, suggested that Cole must have sought employment at the mine in order to secure such incredible access.”
This year, The Magnum Square Print Sale is in partnership with Aperture, with whom they share a long history. Magnum Photos has invited a roster of artists published by Aperture to participate in the Square Print Sale alongside their own photographers.
‘Hidden’ The Magnum Square Print Sale in Partnership with Aperture runs from 8AM EST Monday 28 October until midnight EST Friday 01 November 2019. Signed or estate-stamped, museum-quality, 6×6” prints from over 100 artists will be available for $100 for 5 days only on shop.magnumphotos.com
