NEW YORK, NY.- Horizons are where the finite meets the infinite; a site of endings and beginnings, anticipation and transformation. On the Horizon, the October print sale, features 111 photographers and artists invited by Aperture and Magnum Photos to contribute images that explore the edges of photographic practice, push the boundaries of what we know and see, and embrace the unknown.

Sarah Meister, Aperture’s newly appointed executive director and former curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art proposed this theme as a means of gathering images she has long admired by Magnum photographers and curated the Aperture selection of artists and images. Several are participating for the first time, including Tina Barney, Mitch Epstein, the Estate of Luigi Ghirri, and Laurie Simmons.

“Photography is a profoundly democratic media, and this Square Print Sale is a rare opportunity for all of us to own work by some of its most creative and inspiring practitioners, The multitude of perspectives gathered here reflect the vitality and breadth of the medium. All of these intimately-scaled prints are compelling visual statements that merit close contemplation: whether purchased for oneself or as a gift, these memorable images encourage attentive connection with the world around us.”

For these photographers, this curation was a chance to consider the hope found in beginnings. Sabine Hornig’s reimagined New York skyline is a detail drawn from her recently unveiled mural at LaGuardia Airport, commissioned by the Public Art Fund as a welcome to the City That Never Sleeps. Nanna Heitmann’s print brings us a moment where fireflies circle firefighters battling the ongoing blaze in Yakutia, Siberia which has destroyed millions of hectares of forest: here, the quiet scene catches the workers at the beginning of a long night. Gillian’s Laub’s portrait of Dolly Parton captures a moment in which Parton was sharing her advice for the secret to a successful long-term relationship on the eve of the photographer’s marriage. Alec Soth’s picture of a dog sitting in front of a Bogota skyline is simple in its content: its allegory lies in its representation of a new chapter of Soth’s life - becoming a father to his baby daughter Carmen that year.




These images present the future as an open book, demanding questions of the part we might play. The three youths perched on the branch of an ancient tree in Brooklyn in Jamel Shabazz’s image could be contemplating just this. Marc Riboud’s instantly-recognizable 1967 photograph of a young woman presenting a flower to bayonet-wielding members of the National Guard, during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon, seems to communicate that the smallest actions have the potential to effect change. Yael Martinez depicts an elder from Guerrero, Mexico, a town ravaged by violence, taking part in a traditional new year’s ceremony intended to close the past and open new pathways. Photography is not only an explanatory medium, but also a tool which helps connect each practitioners’ purpose in life, like Khalik Allah: the horizons he wants to touch with his photography involve his work reaching out and affecting more hearts and minds.

Equally, the horizon brings us endings, and images serve to suspend these fragile pieces of time indefinitely. Gregory Halpern’s picture, from his project ZZYZX, gives us a contemplative, or perhaps lonely, desert dune in California in the final moments of a sunset. Eve Arnold shows Marilyn Monroe towards the end of her life: though she is only thirty four years of age in Arnold’s print, it’s the twilight of her career, and in two years’ time she will die. Deaths of household names become landmarks in our understanding of time, and with each major cultural transition we have found opportunities to reflect on watershed moments of the past through photography. Danny Lyon’s emblematic image of protestors at the SNCC’s March on Washington singing freedom songs was initially a poster for a campaign by the activist group, and its significance resounds today in its usage as a mural for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The horizon is also the neverending yet infinitesimal zone of the in-between. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the experiences of young people. In Mary Ellen Mark’s photo, two teen bull riders in Texas, Craig and Cheyloh, display a swagger for her camera that speaks of the quiet assurance that they are exactly where they need to be. In Alessandra Sanguinetti’s picture, young cousins Guille and Belinda link arms as they watch a storm passing in the distance, their fleeting adolescence carrying a greater importance than they know. Chris Steele-Perkins’ print sees kids in 1978 watching and waiting on what the future would bring for their home of Derry, Northern Ireland. Elsewhere, the photographers experiment with ambiguous and liminal geographies. Larry Sultan’s image is taken from a home movie that formed part of his project Pictures from Home, which sought meaning within the institution of the suburban American family during the Reagan era. Daido Moriyama’s photo of his shadow on a road in Hokkaido was created from a restless obsession at the time, as he describes, with wasteland, wilderness, and the “endless horizon behind it”.

Often, we look to alternative systems and the natural world around us for guidance. Rebecca Norris Webb’s print comes from her beloved series on Violet Isle, made in collaboration with Alex Webb: the splendid blue and green wing of a pigeon held aloft seems to forecast things to come in its multicoloured feathers. George Rodger’s image of the rural communities in Kordofan, Sudan in the late 1940s represents a welcome period of peace for the photographer and a shift towards a new genre in his practice, following his work documenting years of turmoil immediately following WWII in Europe.

Horizons in their literal form are a fruitful site for technical and visual experimentation: there’s Muhammad Ali’s larger-than-life character reflected in the photographic frame he occupies in Thomas Hoepker’s image of the boxer jumping off a bridge on the Chicago River, while a print from Elliott Erwitt’s beloved street photography of dogs sees a chihuahua dwarfed by a woman’s sandalled feet. Martin Parr’s photo taken on the beach at Weymouth, Great Britain, represents a revelation in his technique - the moment he finally shot the image he’d wanted to make for years, and Joel Meyerowitz’s horizon picture is also a fortunate assemblage of components: where man, shadow, blimp, a speedboat and a Miami Beach rooftop gather fortuitously and uncannily in the frame.

The images in this selection bear in mind the knowledge and experiences we have gained until this point. At the same time, these pictures are unafraid to turn against established rules, taking steps forward with fresh spirit. Together, the prints boast of the fertile landscapes of possibility, adaptation and invention as we approach our creative, personal, and societal horizons.