Source
Spring 2007

This is the 50th issue of Source and we have taken this anniversary as an opportunity to renew the magazine with a redesign and a fresh approach to the way it is put together.

The purpose of Source has always been to provide a forum for both informed critical writing about photography and the publication of new photographic work. We have always sought to discuss photography in as many different political and social contexts as possible. With this issue we have started three new columns: Money, Law and Advertising to make current debate about photography outside the gallery and publishing worlds a prominent part of the magazine. We have also increased the space given to reviews and will seek to cover a broad range of exhibited and published work in addition to our existing coverage of documentary and art photography. In this issue there are reviews of the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition and recent writing about photography in French.

A mainstay of the magazine is the work photographers show us at venues around the country or send in to the office for us to consider for publication. In addition to these portfolios we will now also include a selection of work in each issue by a practitioner placing recent pictures in the context of the evolution of their practice. We also plan to commission more writing to introduce the photographic work in the magazine. Here, the artist John Stezaker provides the first such portfolio of pictures, with an essay by David Green and two excerpts from a long interview with Stezaker that introduce aspects of his varied and fascinating work.

Christian Hagemann’s work makes use of artifice in both staged and found scenarios. He uses props that could be from the world of advertising, but instead of selling lifestyles they appear charged with more personal memories. In other images the artist reveals the interior of a nightclub before or after opening hours and the empty stage of some unidentified studio shoot.

Petros Chrisostomou works by placing manipulated everyday objects in constructed interiors. Scale becomes uncertain in these environments with towering hairpieces dominating regal interiors. In recent images the artist presents a wonderland of mutating coins, bird feathers and biros that come to life in a recreation of his childhood living room.

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