Source
Spring 2002

Beyond the pages of the specialist photography magazines there is a large economy of people that use and discuss photographs. The interview with Michael Rand and Masoud Golsorkhi, respectively of The Sunday Times magazine and Tank, the fashion magazine, describes two different ways in which pictures are used. The Sunday Times magazine, which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary, has been identified with high profile photojournalism while Tank has sought to reinvent the way fashion magazines function. Both interviewees give an insight into the decision making processes that decide which pictures are used and the motivations behind the publication of each magazine.

The mainstream press has also been changing its mind in what it says about photography. David Brittain surveys the way newspapers write about pictures, from the news pages to the reviews, and remarks on the varied nature of that coverage as well as the recently changing attitudes of art critics.

Laura Thomas draws on her childhood memories of the relationship between her parents and contrasts this with the way she understands their relationship now. She has produced an affectionate portrait of them around the family home.

Colin Gray‘s photographic series The Parents has been evolving over the last 22 years. He has looked at his relationship with his parents and their relationship with each other. He has now almost reached the age his parents were when he started the project leading him to reflect on the possibility that their history will become his future. The series had previously been characterised by a playfulness that fully involved his parents but this has changed with the deterioration in his mother’s health and his father’s increasing involvement in her care. The new pictures charting this deterioration inevitably have a more sombre tone but some of the old spirit is still obvious.

Placing an image of her father throwing a ball next to a picture of his ashes, Mij Rothera confronts the fact of his death. She undertook this work in an attempt to understand something she could not articulate through any other means.

The nakedness and awkwardness apparent in Stephen Tynan‘s pictures are a challenge to the conventions of the way we should present ourselves. The freedom of photographic self portraiture allows him to explore his own identity as effected by profound emotional events in his life.

Source is a quarterly photography magazine, available in print and as a digital edition, published in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They publish emerging photographic work and engage with the latest in contemporary photography through news, thoughtful features and reviews of the latest exhibitions and books from Ireland and the UK. Their website brings together an archive of writing and pictures from the magazine alongside current features.¹