TI IS MAD FOR: QVEST EDITION

Viva Print! Bravo Qvest!

I love magazines but print...something about it has been starting to feel so ...antique. Beautiful , yes but beautiful like paintings in a museum . It wasn't that the format was the problem. I still love the smell, the feel , the presence of paper....the tactile joy thereof of turning page after page. But what has become difficult for me was that formulaic ...impersonal... content where more and more editors were bent on only discussing the advertisers in their pages and a short list of very established and therefore redundant talent in music, film and design. And then I got the new Qvest in the mail
after one of the editors of the mag send a note via my imagist mailbox . Or to be precise I got a copy of the new Qvest Edition which as the intro describes :"takes on the international art, photography, fashion and design worlds. In particular, long stretches of the magazine is devoted to exclusive and idiosyncratic portfolio contributions" . With Ashley Heath (former senior editor of The Face), Tamara Rothstein and Patrick Waugh heading up Qvest Edition, I wasn't shocked to see Steven Klein, Bruce Weber and Joe McKenna , Emma Summerton and Alisdair McLellan as contributors. But what was exhilarating was to watch how the design broke the work of this body of talent open with a freedom and spontaneity that I haven't seen in years. I loved too that I discovered new work in the book, particularly the photography of George Osodi, chronicling Lagos, Nigeria in a way that crackled off the page. I loved that the magazine was a tour through an aesthetic that was both glossy/seductive as well as difficult and unsettling . I thought, "That's what I want from print." Provocation and courage as well as seduction. More and more my group of friends have been talking about how we miss grain and texture in photography...not in a sentimental way but in the way that provides friction and tension for your eye. I loved that Steven Klein "Photo Booth" series that went completely lo-fi and completely personal. I loved the design work on the Alaia story created by Weber and McKenna and there is a really "new" fashion story by Tim Gutt that makes you realize that not every stone has been turned in contemporary fashion. Usually magazines that mix art and fashion, design and celebrity end up with compartmentalized pages . But the way the different modes vibrated off of each other....I had to say , "Bravo." Print that is new. I pray that this is the future!