Fotograf Magazine #40 Earthlings

The fortieth edition of Fotograf Magazine focuses on earthlings. As usual, it thus partly shares the theme of the Fotograf Festival, expanding on it through both theoretical and photographic contributions. The conviction that photography, as a recording medium, is only one of the many ways of capturing natural processes and observing changes in the climate stands at the core of the artworks and approaches introduced on the pages of the magazine. A related motif is the idea of the natural metabolism of the image and trust in the capacity to capture within it traces of the reality that is changing around us. This also has to do with the conviction that folk (or artistic), non-scientific practice can serve as a guide on how to depict the climate crisis and uncover the principles of terrestrialness.

With contributions by Elena Aya Bundurakis, Michał Patycki, Martin Dušek, Tomáš Hrůza, Denisa Langrová, Ruta Putramentaite, Jonáš Richter, Katarína Poliačiková, Daria Sazanovich, Ge Viana, Michal Kindernay, Naoya Hatakeyma, Eduardo Navarro, Nico Alexandroff, Robert Zhao Renhui, Susan Schuppli.

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Fotograf Magazine is comprehensive 80-page periodical that has been published in both Czech and English versions since 2002. Building on the magazine’s activities, Fotograf Gallery was opened in 2009 and, two years later, the first Fotograf Festival was held. This led to the establishment of Fotograf 07 z.s. as an officially registered association that functions as an art platform and carries out extensive publication, exhibition, and educational activities in the field of photography as well as in certain other overlapping disciplines. This organisation aims to promote and support photography within the context of the fine arts, to ensure its greater inclusion in contemporary art, and to increase public awareness about photography not only in the Czech Republic but also at a visible level on the international scene.

Over the course of its existence, Fotograf Magazine has attained a prominent position amongst Czech cultural periodicals. At the global level, it is one of the most important magazines focusing on current photographic art. The mission and objective of Fotograf Magazine is to inform the Czech professional public as well as the broader cultural public about what is happening in the field of photographic art at home and abroad, and, even more importantly, to increase awareness about Czech photography and contemporary visual culture in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Fotograf Magazine is published three times a year and each issue has a unique thematic focus. Because of the resulting quality of timelessness, Fotograf Magazine has an advantage over standard art magazines as it is possible to return to individual issues and use them as study materials for a specific thematic area.

The bulk of the magazine’s contents consists of visual presentations of the works of individual artists accompanied by interpretive texts by renowned experts. The main thematic block, which continues to be our key focal point, includes the Project and Interview columns. The Discoveries column is the lead-in to that part of Fotograf Magazine devoted to current trends, books, and events, and also presents artists who we are convinced bring original approaches to artworks using the photographic medium. In the Theory column, we regularly present texts associated with contemporary photography theory. Our Reviews column brings information about interesting publication activities and, as has become traditional, the Events column lists the most important events taking place in both the Czech Republic and abroad.