Would you wear Tank Man on a t-shirt?

That’s the question photo-loving followers of fashion will be asking themselves at Dover Street Market

When the British photographer, Phaidon author and former Magnum president Stuart Franklin lay on the balcony of the Beijing Hotel on 4 June 1989, watching the tanks roll into Tiananmen  Square, he knew he was witnessing something momentous. However, he probably didn’t think for one moment that one of his photos from that day  The Tank Man would end up on a fashion t-shirt nearly 30 years later. 

Tank Man, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, 1989 by Stuart Franklin. As reproduced in Franklin's book The Documentary Impulse

How much has changed during those intervening years. Right now, Dover Street Market in London is offering an exclusive collection of photograph-themed items, to coincide with the Photo London fair.

We’ve already brought you news of Martin Parr’s Paul Smith swimming shorts. Now Magnum Photos tell us they've collaborated with the British stylist Andrew Richardson to create a line of t-shirts reproducing a series of well-known and not-so-well-known Magnum shots.

There’s Guy Le Querrec's photo of the Berlin Wall in 1989; Thomas Dworzak’s image of a looted shop window in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan during the March 2005 disturbances; and a 1978 shot of handcuffed man in New York City by Leonard Freed.

Raf Simons x Mapplethorpe t-shirt. Image courtesy of Dover Street Market

If you’re heading along to the shop, be sure to look out for an exclusive Robert Mapplethorpe t-shirt by Raf Simons, as well as refreshments courtesy of Rose Bakery. For more on Magnum take a look at our books here; for more on Rose Bakery, consider these titles.