Jacob Aue Sobol

Jacob Aue Sobol

The Gomez Brito family plant beans near Nebaj, Guatemala, on 25 April 2004. The bean plant is a vital source of food and a symbol of life, community, and resilience for the Ixil people. It holds deep spiritual meaning and carries their nourishment, history, and identity.

The Gomez Brito family are Ixil Mayans living near the village of Nebaj, Guatemala, a mountainous region that remained largely isolated from outside access until recent decades. As a result of their isolation, the Ixil Mayans long maintained their traditional beliefs and way of dress, but in the late 1970s and 1980s the region was engulfed in a civil war and many Indigenous people were displaced. When peace returned in the 1990s the family, like many others, were able to return to their traditional ways. Mother Juanita and father Andrés live with their nine children. They work on small plots of land that have belonged to their family for generations. From sunrise to sunset the family collect fruit and berries, cultivate corn and beans, and tend their animals.

Jacob Aue Sobol (b. 1976) is a Danish photographer renowned for his raw, emotionally charged black-and-white imagery that blurs the line between documentary and personal storytelling.

Aue Sobol originally studied at the European Film College and later honed his photographic vision at Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Art Photography, where he began to develop the distinctive visual style that would come to define his work—grainy, high-contrast photographs often made with a simple point-and-shoot camera. His photography is deeply intimate, often rooted in personal experience and emotional intensity, exploring themes such as love, identity, isolation, and belonging.

Sobol joined Magnum Photos in 2007 and became a full member by 2012. His images have been exhibited worldwide and published in several acclaimed photobooks. His recent works include With and Without You (2021), a meditation on memory, love, and grief, and James House (2023), which explores the intimate life of an Inuit family, continuing his deep engagement with personal and cultural identity.