Conscientious

You gotta be a bit skeptical when a corporation tries to give itself an edge by dealing with social issues. Benetton has probably pushed the limits quite a bit with its advertizing campaigns. Regardless of what you think of Benetton you should check out Colors - their online magazine. The current edition (56) is about violence. Excellent photojournalism, very well done.

The blog to go to to read good reviews of excellent art and/or photography magazines is the invaluable coincidences. However, I felt I needed to point out the new edition of slightly mis-named Modern Painters magazine. MP usually features an excellent mix of architecture, paintings, photography, and whatever else there is that can be called modern art. The current edition (Spring 2004) is almost entirely devoted to photography and, I think, anybody interested in contemporary photography might want to check it out. It easily beats all "real" photography magazines - where else can you find a photo magazine that's not a glorified catalogue for photo gizmos that nobody needs (yet another slightly modified digital camera with some more useless features) but, instead, focusses on actual photography done by cutting-edge photographers?

Update (12 April): coincidences discusses Modern Painters in detail.

I had seen Lenswork magazine at the book store before but because of its relatively high price - one magazine costs $10 - I had so far refrained from buying it. The latest edition - no. 53 - caught my eye the other day so I decided to splurge and buy it. It's a very mixed bag. While the photography (portfolios by Andrew Beckham, Aaron Huey, and Neil Folberg) is quite stunning I am not at all impressed by the editorial contents. So be warned - especially if your interest in photography stretches beyond standard fine-art b/w photography.

"MakingRoom is a magazine about the process, intention and results of image-making." Check it out - you might even remember some of this edition's features from this weblog.

When you're in Amsterdam, one of the places not to be missed is its photography museum Foam. Foam also publishes a photography magazine, which I don't think is very widely known, even though it clearly deserves to be. Published four times a year, Foam (the magazine) is theme based - the current one being "Searching" - and presents portfolios of photographers who fit into that theme. "Searching", for example, contains work by Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thomas Ruff (on the web the images can't convey what they show in print), and others - with each portfolio printed on different paper (!) to maximize the impact of the work and accompanied by an essay about the photographer. "Searching" also contains an interview with gallerist Jen Bekman. Unfortunately, if you look for Foam at your newsstand or corporate book store, you probably won't have much luck. I managed to find it at some of the international magazine stores in New York City; but it appears to be best to simply place an order online.

I used to have a subscription of New Yorker magazine, and part of the thrill was to see the photography, in particular what Richard Avedon had come up with each week (that way, I did learn that even someone like Avedon could also produce extremely mediocre photographs - something, I think, Alec Soth pointed out later on his blog [using the John Kerry portrait as an example]). But I think there was more than just Avedon's work. Or maybe memory doesn't serve me right. In any case, after some sort of subscription hiatus I'm now back (hear that, Alec?), since someone gave me a gift subscription. And each week, I'm now dreading to see the new edition because the photography has just become so... well, how can I say this in a nice way? It's just so forgettable and safe (with the exception of a couple of photographs in the March 10 issue that is). Often, the only interesting photographs are to be found in the Listings pages (after the "Goings on about town" page), when they show an example of work to be seen in Chelsea. Maybe I have to go back and look at older issues now to see whether they still appear to be more interesting. But to see a magazine that, if I remember this correctly, was the first to hire a fine-art photographer as a staff photographer going down such a predictable and outright boring route is a bit sad.