LONDON.- Turning Points, the April 2020 Square Print Sale in collaboration with The Everyday Projects, will bring together a selection of over 100 images by international visual artists. The participating photographers will look over their personal archives in search of images relating to, or capturing events that changed the course of history, society, a life, or a practice.

This sale represents the first collaboration between Magnum Photos – the world’s longest-running photographic and artistic co-operative – and The Everyday Projects, a global network that began as Everyday Africa in 2012. Everyday Africa set out to challenge the media-driven stereotypes that affect the continent by featuring images of everyday life made by a community of contributing photographers that live or work extensively on the continent. The viral success of this first iteration of the project led to an expanding international movement with like-minded storytellers worldwide creating their own @Everyday feeds on Instagram, using photography to combat cliché, promote local norms, and celebrate global commonalities.

On the sale’s theme the co-founders of The Everyday Projects, Austin Merrill and Peter DiCampo explained, “Turning Points is the ideal theme for our first collaboration with Magnum Photos. The Everyday Projects was born of a desire to use photography to encourage people to change the way they think about the world. The Square Print Sale is an opportunity for our photographers to showcase that effort, bringing stories they care about to a new and wide audience.”

Turning points can occur on a scale that spans at extremes; the global or national, and the most personal of moments. Photographers by their trade and disposition are often well placed to record events that shape the course of history, yet the nature of artistic practice means that changes within their own craft and outlook are also reflected in the images they make.

Alec Soth’s submission marks an epiphany of sorts, the moment he learned “that the ability to choose my own subject was essential to my creative success.” Danny Lyon’s chosen photograph was part of his seminal project, The Bikeriders. Lyon recalls the life-changing response to the work from Hugh Edwards, then the curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, who suggested the images should be produced as a book alongside texts by the likes of William Burroughs. Cristina de Middel’s collaboration with Senegalese designer Selly Raby Kane opened a new chapter in her project on the universality of humankind. For others, these pivotal moments come later in life – as is the case with Herbert List’s image, taken late in his career on his first ever roll of 35mm film, revitalizing his love for street-photography.

Sometimes images that capture seeming pivotal events change or develop over time. Newsha Tavakolian’s photograph of Iran’s shrinking Lake Urmia seemed, at the time of making, an image of a doomed landmark soon to vanish, yet rains over the last year have given the body of water renewed life. Moises Saman’s image, taken in Afghanistan in 2010, represents to him “a turning point in understanding the inability of America’s war effort to bring peace and stability” to the nation. Wissam Nassar’s work focuses upon finding and capturing “moments of reprieve” in the precarious, see-sawing lives of fellow residents Gaza, where the effects of conflict can irrevocably change whole families’ lives and situations without warning.

Technical developments or hands-on experiments also offer fresh avenues for image making, as was the case for Martin Parr’s making use of ring flash combined with a macro lens in the mid 90s, and Elliott Landy when he decided to photograph Bob Dylan using infrared film. Taken in 2015, Malin Fezehai’s chosen image, of an Eritrean wedding, was the first iPhone photograph to ever receive a World Press Photo Award, making the photographer realize that, “you can make do with what you have, and it’s what you are seeing in front of you that matters.”

Turning Points’ Magnum’s Square Print Sale, in collaboration with The Everyday Projects, runs through Sunday, 12 April, 6PM EST, 2020. Signed or estate-stamped, museum-quality, 6x6” prints from over 100 visual artists will exceptionally be available for $100, for 7 days only, from magnumphotos.com/shop.

Magnum photographers will be donating 50% of their profits from this Square Print Sale to MSF’s (Médecins Sans Frontières) COVID-19 emergency response.