The Magnum Digest: December 6, 2019

Nat Geo’s photos of 2019 list includes Moises Saman and Emin Özmen’s images

In its regular end of year run down National Geographic included five images by Moises Saman spanning his work on evangelical prisoners in El Salvador and his coverage of the Central American migrant caravan as it moved north through Mexico toward the US border. Emin Özmen’s portrait of twin sisters living in Turkey – having fled violence in the Syrian city of Aleppo – is also included in the year’s list.

You can see the full list of National Geographic‘s photos of 2019, here.

You can see more of Saman’s El Salvador work, here, on Magnum.

Bruce Gilden’s vision of a long-lost New York, in Interview Magazine

“That New York that existed in the late seventies, early eighties, it was raw, violent, trashy.” Bruce Gilden describes the long-lost New York he knew when making the work that would eventually become his latest book, Lost and Found. As the title suggests, the images included in the new release had been lost for decades before they were rediscovered, during a recent house move, uncovering a previously unseen portrait of Gilden’s native New York City. You can read the feature here, on Interview.

You can read more about the book here, on Magnum. Signed copies of Lost and Found are available on the Magnum Shop.

Alex Webb speaks to Brownstoner about Brooklyn

Real estate and development focused, Brooklyn-based publication Brownstoner featured an interview with Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb about their 2019 book, Brooklyn: The City Within. The two photographers – longtime residents of the borough – reflect upon the body of work, and their feelings about leaving Brooklyn at some point in the future.

You can read the feature onBrownstoner, here, and an interview with Webb and Norris Webb on Magnum, here.

Signed copies of Brooklyn: The City Within are available now on the Magnum Shop.

Alec Soth discussed Sleeping by the Mississippi in an interview with Haaretz

Coinciding with his participation in this year’s PHOTO IS:RAEL, the seventh iteration of the annual international photography festival in Tel Aviv, Alec Soth spoke with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He discusses his first published work, Sleeping by the Mississippi, and explains why he will never make work in Israel. You can read the interview here.

Lorenzo Meloni photographs the ‘resurrection of Daesh’

Flemish-language daily De Standaard has featured a selection of Lorenzo Meloni’s recent work made in Northern Syria, where disturbing signs point toward Islamic State’s continuing influence in Syria. The feature suggests that the caliphate was not as disrupted as President Trump and US forces had hoped when they pulled out of the region.

You can see Meloni’s photographs, and read the feature – in Flemish – here.

Martin Parr’s portrait of ‘hidden’ Oxford

In 2014 Martin Parr was commissioned by Oxford University’s famed Bodleian Library to document the people and events that make the University what it is – the rituals, traditions, ceremonies, staff, students, and of course – the city itself. You can see a selection of images from the project on Creative Boom, here.

Magnum Streetwise on CNN

The 2019 photobook, Magnum Streetwise, offers a fulsomely illustrated view on the long-running involvement of Magnum Photos and its members in the genre of street photography. The book features profiles on 30 individual photographers’ archives, as well as chapters exploring the depictions of London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo through the Magnum archive.

You can read the CNN feature here, and read an extract from the book’s introduction – by its editor Stephen McLaren – on Magnum.