The Magnum & World Press Photo Square Print Sale: Written by Light October 16–22
107 Square Prints priced at $110/£110/€120, available for one week only. Shop the collection now.
In 2005, Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol traveled to a remote area of the mountains near Nebaj, Guatemala, where he spent time living with the Gomez-Brito family. This Magnum Distribution revisits the history and hardships surrounding this indigenous family through Sobol’s raw, striking and beautiful images, as well as his accompanying text.
A full photographic story in an envelope. Eight 8×10” hand-stamped prints and a printed page detailing the story and captions. Limited Edition of 100.
The Gomez-Brito family lives in a remote area of the mountains in Guatemala near the village of Nebaj. Nebaj is part of the Ixil-triangle: an area of three towns that maintains one of the strongest indigenous cultures in Guatemala. Even though natives make up the majority of the population in the country, they are still discriminated against in many ways. Most of them live in poverty and many work on farms earning a wage of 2-3 dollars a day.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Ixil-region was engulfed in a civil war, killing and displacing thousands of Ixil Mayans. During the war, the portrayed family lost their youngest child, who died of hunger and disease when hiding in the surrounding mountains. Today, in the very same mountains, the mother Juanita and the father Andres live with their nine children. Unlike many other families from this area, they have succeeded in keeping the family together by working hard on their own pieces of land. From early morning to sunset, their daily routine consists of: collecting berries and other fruits, cultivating the land (which mainly consist of corn and beans) and breeding the animals.
Even though the chance of change in their life is most unlikely, all the children have different dreams for the future. Maria, 7, wants to continue school and get an education, Faustino, 18, is eager to find a way to enter the USA, while David, 6, claims that his wish is to take over the family’s land, when his father retires.
Harking back to the analogue days of photo distribution, the Magnum Distribution is a full photographic story in an envelope.
Each pack contains eight 8×10” prints, hand-stamped with the Magnum Collection stamp and the photographer’s copyright stamp, and accompanied by a printed page detailing the story and individual captions.
Each pack is numbered from 1 to 100 on its envelope.
Price may increase as the edition sells.
Our contemporary version of the distro plays on the nostalgia of the press print, and makes the work of Magnum photographers available to purchase as an unsigned set of digital C-type prints, exclusively through the Magnum Shop, in a limited edition of 100.
Magnum Distribution sets are produced in New York from where they will ship
