Source
Winter 1999: Issue 21
English
Edited by John Duncan and Richard West.
Softcover
42 pages
260 x 205 mm
1999
ISSN 1369222020
Issue 21 of Source magazine has a literary focus on the photographic magazine internationally. A variety of articles on the subject explore German, Scandinavian, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, French, North American, British and Irish magazines over the course of five written pieces. Fewer reviews are featured in this issue, making space for the commentary on publication as well as a think piece by Aaron Kelly (NI, M) questioning if Northern Irish media is ‘unusually philistine’. This issue also carries an editorial which ponders the audience of photographic magazines and the lineage of Irish photographic little magazines which came before Source, such as Exposure and Belfast Exposed. The editors assert that they intend for Source to have more than just a specialised readership audience of people who move within art circles. New photographic work is featured by Jonathan Olley‘s (GB, M) photographs of army and police barracks in the North of Ireland as well as Chris Harrison‘s (GB, M) photographs of war memorials in the U.K. and American photographer Bruce Gilden‘s (US, M) documentation of Irish horse racing. The cover image is by Jonathan Olley.
Artists and writers featured in this issue include Joachim Schmid (DE, M), Enno Kaufhold (DE, M), Ramón Esparza (ES, M), Stephen Bull (GB, M), A. D. Coleman (US, M), Paul Seawright (NI, M), Bruce Gilden (US, M), Tom Paulin (NI, M), Jonathan Olley (GB, M), David Brett (NI, M), Siún Hanrahan (IE, F), Martin Healy (IE, M), Gavin Murphy (IE, M), Seán Hillen (NI, M) and Aaron Kelly (NI, M).
Editorial
In the course of producing this issue it has become clear that Source shares a common history with many other photographic publications from around the world. Source was originally envisaged as a member’s newsletter and was initiated by practising photographers. Various attempts had been made to start a photographic journal before Source came along, notably the short-lived Belfast Exposed magazine and Exposure, produced by The Gallery of Photography. The motivation in producing these magazines – in Ireland and elsewhere – always appears to have been firstly, to create a means of disseminating and recording the work being produced and secondly, to start a critical debate around photography. More often than not magazines have been started by galleries, individual artists or groups and they have sought to attract readers like themselves. The twin challenges facing ‘little’ magazines are survival and finding an audience and it is taken for granted that a photographic magazine will only attract a specialist audience. We would like to defeat this expectation (and survive in the process) by transcending our history and publishing work that can claim anyone’s attention.
Issue 3 of Exposure, published in May 1992 carried an examination of the state of Irish photography by David Lee. His seven-point list of impediments to the growth of Irish photography included: the need for an honours degree course, a magazine or journal, a comprehensively stocked book shop, a book publisher, a national institution designated to collect ‘art photography’ and finally a better Gallery of Photography. We now have all of these (to varying degrees) bar a book publisher. If recent photographic history began in Ireland with the funding of the Gallery of Photography in 1978 and if Lee had Irish photography still in nappies in 1992 (aged 14) then as we face the millennium at the age of 21, we have matured fast.
The recently published report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland recommends a strategy for police architecture: that police stations ‘should have, so far as possible, the appearance of ordinary buildings’. In this climate we are publishing Jonathan Olley’s images of police and army barracks in Northern Ireland alongside a specially commissioned essay by Tom Paulin.
Chris Harrison’s work Sites of Memory, War Memorials at the end of the 20th Century shows the histories behind the monuments to the dead of the two World Wars. David Brett discusses the problems of memorializing contested history. We preview work by Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden who casts an American eye over Irish horse racing. The work will be shown in its entirety at The Gallery of Photography in February.
We would like to incorporate our reader’s opinions into the magazine by starting a letters page so please write in.
— The Editors
(source: https://www.source.ie/archive/issue21/is21editorial.php)
About the Magazine
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.
source.ie
(source: https://www.source.ie/main/about.php)
