Magnum 75 is the inaugural NFT collection by Magnum Photos. Created in 2022 for the agency’s 75th anniversary year and released in three curations, the collection brings together 225 iconic images from Magnum photographers, taken across seven decades.
Each curation is composed in dialogue with a leading picture editor from across the globe and selected to embody the agency’s past, present, and future. This second curation was made in dialogue with Azu Nwagbogu, founder and director of African Artists’ Foundation and director of LagosPhoto Festival.
Nwagbogu says: “The vast Magnum archive reveals so much about the history of the modern world and its unresolved global issues with regard to ecology, humanity and technology. Rather than exploring Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment,’ this collection studies the ‘indecisive moment’ — the interstitial spaces, the energized subjects floating in-between events, where little obvious action occurs but where the subject(s) seem to be caught in anticipation. Each image is charged with feeling, intent, foreboding, and meaning, composed with a sense of expectation that offers multiple scenarios and possibilities about past events. It is not revisionist history, but rather invites the collector and viewers to perhaps look at the image again, more closely.”
