Back to the Future: The New Visual Inspiration

I have always liked large scale magazine pages: the impact of that visual storytelling is unequalled. But just as the screens have gotten smaller and smaller and films can now be watched on one’s phone instead of the big screen (how, I myself don’t quite fathom), so is a magazine editorial more likely to be flashed into your eyes from behind a digital screen than envelope you with the restlessness of a new adventure when you unfold the pages of a magazine.

But alas, there are wonderful people out there who aren’t afraid of going against the grain and who know how to best tell visual stories: through the old, tangible beauty of the raw paper. Printed on large format matte paper, with immersing photography spreads interspersed with just as inspiring big types that are bound to live room for the imagination, this is the kind of imagery and storytelling you get lost in and go back to again and again, letting yourself get carried away wherever the story takes you and beyond. To learn, discover, stay curious and creative.

When I asked artist Heather Chontos about her earliest visual inspiration, the first thing she mentioned was Peter Lindbergh’s photography for Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine which, with its larger than the usual fashion magazin format, provided the photographer with more space and freedom for his visual storytelling. “Thus was the time of photographer Peter Lindbergh who I worshiped. My walls were plastered with images from these magazines and I would add drawings and paintings to them. I loved Nadja Auermann’s face and would add to her images quite often. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time. […] It is, for example, when film went to digital and the time and quality was not used in the same way to get the final image. No more Polaroids warming under our armpits, instead, a band of pointed fingers around a screen at one of a hundred frames collected through a cable attached to the camera were analysed by teams of people saying “move this to the right”, “move this to the left” and then back again with the options of perfecting everything frame by digital frame. It lost the magic of chance of something happening that was un-expected, un-planned, that was so boring to me and so now some of that quality of content is forgotten and/or unknown by these new generations. I really sound like an old lady when I say this, but, for me, all of the magic was in the suspense and the imperfection of a captured moment and that feels a bit lost now, it feels like we concoct our content to ridiculous and unnatural standards.”

So here are my favourite three magazines that inspire me visually more than any other print media at the moment. Classic, untamed and endlessly adventurous.

Légende.
Each issue of Légende magazine focuses on an iconic figure, personalities who defined or define the times they lived or live in. Each story is told by historians, journalists, illustrators and photographers. Past issues have been dedicated to Brigitte Bardot, Rafael Nadal, Zinédine Zidane, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II. In the digital era of fragmented information and content and abbreviated everything, Legende puts everything in perspective and presents an actor, or a sportsman, or a musician, or a queen with dignity, elegance and untarnished value. “It is conceived as a collector’s item. Only on paper can we produce this effect,” says editor-in-chief François Vey.

SIRENE.
A community of free spirits. It’s about wilderness in all its majesty and about the human side of the ocean. A bridge between people and the sea. Large recycled paper pages (made from algae, to make use of excess algal blooms from lagoons at risk), rough and porous as only salt water stains can be, large white spaces, pure as a sea horizon, and page-turner stories that will put you on the same wave-length with a surging community looking at the oceans as the intersection of the planet’s destinies.

Waves & Woods.
“An earth and ocean publication conscious of lives lived in these surroundings and the positive impact they are making in their environments.” – Matthew Wigglesworth, the in-house artist for issue 32. It’s not just about their stories, but it somehow manages to channel your own creativity, your own sense of freedom that drives you to create new paths.