LONDON.- Magnum photographers will be donating 50% of their proceeds from the sale to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These proceeds will help fund the ICRC’s humanitarian mission to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance in Ukraine as well as other fragile contexts.

2022 sees Magnum Photos celebrate its 75th anniversary and launch a series of three square print sales. For the first time, the sales will allow collectors to build a triptych of images, curated by photographers or estates, over the course of the year.

The first sale is titled 'Precedents'. It will be followed by two sales in June and October titled 'Magnum 75' and 'Vital Signs'. Each photographer and estate has curated their selection so that the images work alone, or in dialogue with each other. The stories behind each image and the selection will be shared by Magnum across its website and social media platforms.

For 'Precedents', participating photographers and estates have searched their personal archives in search of images that signal the start of something new. The beginning can be literal—an origin— or the moment that everything changed. The chosen images might bring the early career of the photographer to light, or it could be a photo that commenced a project, prompted an obsession, or started a journey.

Featuring work by over 70 Magnum Photographers, the photos on sale span six decades and, together, create a compelling survey of the agency, history, and photojournalism. The sale sees images from famous events in history such as Stuart Franklin’s photo of a defiant young protester at Tiananmen Square in 1989 appear alongside Peter Marlow’s image of seemingly carefree children eating ice cream while surrounding a soldier in Londonderry/Derry in 1979. Elsewhere, we see famous faces such as The Beatles captured by David Hurn as they dash along a train platform while filming “A Hard Day’s Night” and Marlene Dietrich photographed mid-song by Eve Arnold at the Columbia Records studio in 1952. Other photographers introduce less familiar landscapes and places. Alec Soth’s image of a cemetery looming above a gas station in Wisconsin and Hannah Price’s photo of huge presidential busts provide a perspective of the quotidian or the uncanny.

Olivia Arthur, president of Magnum Photos said: “ICRC does such important work in conflict areas across the world. Magnum photographers are united in supporting that work at such a critical time.”

“The ICRC has seen many conflicts start and escalate in recent years, but too few of them end, and in each one it is the civilian populations that bear the consequences.”, Peter Maurer, President of the ICRC