London - Magnum is honoured to announce its return to Photo London 2021 staged at Somerset House from 9 to 12 September 2021. For this edition of the fair, Magnum booth (G26) will feature vintage, posthumous and modern prints by Antoine d’Agata, Eve Arnold, Matt Black, René Burri, Robert Capa, Ernest Cole, Bruce Davidson, Raymond Depardon, Bruce Gilden, Harry Gruyaert, Philippe Halsman, Hiroji Kubota, Sergio Larrain, Marc Riboud, Sim Chi-Yin, and Alex Webb.

“What do you hang on the walls of your mind?” Eve Arnold is known to have asked. This enigmatic quote spotlights photographers’ roles as both thinkers and artists and provides the inspiration for Magnum’s presence at Photo London. This year’s curatorial framework resonates deeply with today’s politics while also reflecting Magnum photographers’ singular visions as interpreters of world events.

Magnum’s presentation will reveal insights into culture, social issues, humanism, and history. Oscillating between artistic vision and documentary investigation, the photographers on view have captured people, cities and landscapes around the globe, chronicling historical and political events and moments of humanity. Philippe Halsman’s phenomenal vintage portrait of Winston Churchill takes centre stage in the booth.

Three stunning vintage prints by Magnum founder Robert Capa from 1936 and 1938 depict Republican soldiers on the Aragon front, here by capturing the brutal realities of the Spanish Civil War. These work will resonate with Sim Chi Yin’s image showing an anti-colonial fighter in the so-called Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) fought by the British Empire. Sim combed the Imperial War Museum’s archive, photographing prints and negatives to merge verso and recto into one plane. Her work re-examines personal history, archival materials, colonial and postcolonial histories. Her exhibition ‘One Day We’ll Understand’ currently features at Les Rencontres d’Arles.

Eve Arnold’s iconic portrait of Human Rights Activist Malcolm X, taken in Chicago in 1962, and Hiroji Kubota’s Black Panthers' protest in the snow, also shot in Chicago in 1969, will be in dialogue with a poignant portrait by Bruce Davidson of two young people, shot in the streets of Harlem, New York, in 1966, an area of the city where the Civils Rights Movement took shape.

Also on view at the fair in London will be Marc Riboud’s 1967 legendary photograph showing an American girl confronting the National Guard outside the Pentagon during the anti-Vietnam march.

Recently acquired by Tate, Ernest Cole’s oeuvre chronicled the horrors of apartheid. In 1966, he fled the Republic of South Africa to the USA, where he concentrated on street photography in primarily urban settings. On view at Photo London will be Cole’s vintage photograph ‘Newspapers are her carpet, fruit crates her chairs and table’, 1960-1966, depicting an interior scene from the legendary body of work, House of Bondage.

Rooted in today's crisis, Antoine d'Agata's Virus series epitomises the world's concerns with Covid-19. From the first day of lockdown following the outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020, d’Agata, who has previously been influenced by artist Francis Bacon, roamed the streets of Paris with a thermal camera to record the impacts of the virus that turned the city into a dystopian theatre of wandering souls.

Known for his graphic and often confrontational close-ups made using flash, Bruce Gilden’s images have a degree of intimacy and directness that have become his signature. A series of his NYC shots exploring similar observations on humanity will be highlights of the booth.

Mirroring socio-political difficulties are works from Raymond Depardon’s Glasgow series. Initially commissioned more than 40 years ago by The Sunday Times, Depardon depicts people living in deprived conditions in an area affected by the decline of industrialism.

René Burri’s exceptional vintage photograph will be another highlight of the presentation. The composition features a family from Nordeste, Brazil, 1960, observing the city of Brasilia on inauguration day. The background features the grand and innovative architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and contrasts with the workers’ position in the space.

A vibrant, lighter and poetic direction will also be examined on the stand through the work of Harry Gruyaert’s stunning view of County Kerry, Ireland, 1988. Harry Gruyaert retrospective, Helmond, Netherlands, is running until the 19th of September 2021. Alongside Gruyaert’s beautiful landscape scenes will be the late Bruno Barbey’s rare Cibachrome and digital prints from Portugal in 1993, which are included in Passages, the catalogue of Bruno Barbey’s career-spanning retrospective exhibition of his work. Two of Alex Webb’s vibrant scenes from Haiti and Mexico will also be on view.

This year, the fair will coincide with the opening of Magnum’s new gallery in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a new chapter for the organisation. Davidson’s fine print at Photo London will reference Paris’ inaugural exhibition, featuring Bruce Davidson and Khalik Allah.

Magnum’s new Paris gallery and working office space will open in autumn 2021 at 68 Rue Léon Frot, 75011, following a significant renovation by London-based Interior Architecture practice Johnson Naylor. The new location will feature exhibition spaces, a private viewing room and library on the ground floor. Modular architecture will allow for innovative and accessible presentations of photographic works ranging from vintage, early, lifetime, and modern prints, to documents, objects and installations. Located behind a grand Parisian doorway leading to an enclosed paved street, the new Magnum gallery will offer more welcoming and upscale presentations. Additional features will include private offices on the first floor and meeting rooms.

Concurrently with Photo London, Herbert List Metamorphoses is on display at Magnum’s 63 Gee Street location. Borrowing its title from Ovid’s epic poem, Metamorphoses focuses on transformation. It seeks to explore the complex relationship between List’s prolific depiction of sculptures, his sensual images of men, and the blurred line between them.

Matt Black’s American Geography will be presented at 63 Gee Street, from 23 September to 17 December, and coincide with Thames&Hudson’s book launch. Black’s Cattle auction, USA, Alturas, California 2016 will be presented at Photo London.

Magnum Photos represents some of the world’s most renowned photographers, maintaining its founding ideals and idiosyncratic mix of journalism, art and storytelling. Magnum photographers share a vision to chronicle world events, people, places and culture with powerful narratives. For nearly 75 years Magnum Photos has been providing the highest quality photographic content to an international client base of media, publishers, brands and cultural institutions.

With presence in Paris, London and NY and a total of 6.4 million followers across its social media, Magnum Photos reaches a global audience and has established itself as the authentic, storytelling photographic force. It remains loyal to its original values of uncompromising excellence, truth, respect and independence.