2020: A world in lockdown, a world in protest

Eli Reed. USA. Houston, Texas. June 8, 2020. George Floyd’s Funeral service… 2020. © 2021 Eli Reed / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SAIF, Paris.

Last year, Magnum photographers traveled the globe recording both the universal effects of the pandemic and a wave of domestic and worldwide protests stirred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In a new launch of content from the photographers’ cooperative, nearly 5,000 additional images have been added to Artstor, with hundreds recording the reverberations of these two seismic shifts across our lives.*

We invite you to sample the latest photographs from Magnum (search “Magnum launch 04” for the new release). Images of the pandemic range from deft allusion — a masked statue in Paris — to scenes of crisis and lock-down from Dagestan to New Delhi. Black Livers Matter demonstrators are documented on streets across America and beyond — Birmingham and Bristol, Montreal and Paris.

Contemporary events also include the lead up to the United States’ national election — where photographer Bruce Gilden’s pro-Trump baby finds its political opponent in the Trump Baby balloon that drifted though the skies of Europe and beyond.

We have also selected images from the rich and eclectic Magnum archive. One focus is on climate and the environment: a pair of photos depicting windmills in Spain provides a time capsule of technology and the historic scope of wind power. Further, we have added to our portrait gallery from Magnum, with an emphasis on artistic, literary, and political/activist figures such as the divergent and remarkable threesome shown here: Georgia O’Keeffe, Angela Davis, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Finally, this new launch offers a panorama of fashion, from the 1960s onwards — shows, shoots, workshops, and personalities.

*Image totals may vary from country to country, reflecting the specifics of international copyright.

View the entire collection in Artstor: Magnum Photos

Woman with hat backstage at Paris fashion week

Alex Majoli. FRANCE. Paris. October 2012. Fashion week. Alexander McQueen backstage. © 2021 Alessandro Majoli / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SAIF, Paris.

– Nancy Minty, collections editor

From JSTOR:

Bair, Nadya. The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020. Accessed June 2, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvxhrhtn.

Badger, Gerry. “Mission Impossible? 60 YEARS OF MAGNUM.” Aperture, no. 187 (2007): 68-83. Accessed June 2, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24473258.