A selection from my archive in Subscribe, the exhibition about artists and alternative magazines at the Art Institute of Chicago

//Subscribe exhibition ident//

//Artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (right) featured in The Uniform Backlash, The i-D Bible Part 2, 1989. Photography Daniel Kohlbacher, styling Simon Foxton. Paul Gorman Archive//

Beginning in the early 1970s—as under-represented groups were demanding new forms of visibility following the emergence of political movements such as Black Power and the Stonewall Rebellion—a handful of British and American photo-driven alternative magazines came on the scene.

The Face, i-D, Rags, Out/Look, and other new publications amplified marginalized voices, especially those of queer makers and makers of colour, and made room for those makers to question who and what was accepted as mainstream. These publications introduced a hybrid model within the magazine industry: combining the high production standards and engagement with fashion of “powerhouse” publications such as Vogue and Life with the use of collage in zines and the text/image provocations of underground newspapers. In the end, these alternative magazines transformed their industry.

From the introduction to Subscribe.

Two years ago, just as the enormity of the pandemic was emerging, I met American curators Solveig Nelson and Michal Raz-Russo in London to discuss making a contribution to an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago about the significance of alternative magazines to Western culture.

Nelson and Raz-Russo had taken on board my work in the field – including my posts here about independent publications, my 2017 book The Story of The Face and PRINT! Tearing It Up, the Somerset House show I organised with Claire Catterall in the summer of 2018 – and were interested in drawing on my knowledge and archive, with a thread on the links between such titles and visual artists.

Despite considerable delays caused by the turmoil as Covid-19 ravaged the world and the curators attended to their responsibilities – Nelson is Julius Rosenwald Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago while Raz-Russo took up the role of programmes director at the foundation of the eminent African-American photographer Gordon Parks – their exhibition Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines 1970-1995 opened in Chicago last month to general acclaim.

Subscribe features installations, photography, video and film. Of the 130 magazines on display, around a quarter are from my archive. Here’s a selection (please note these are my photographs, not from the show):