January 31, 2014 |
10 MAGAZINE: ON NEWSSTANDS FROM TUESDAY…
…Set an alarm or tattoo your hand, or whatever so you don’t forget.
EDITOR’S LETTER
I have become mildly obsessed with all things digital. All platforms of virtual communication. I am defo not discriminating. I love the idea of reaching out and communicating to millions of people ideas, inspirations, things that make you laugh and cry. This may be considered over-sharing, but for me it totally allows me to experience so many different things and share so many different events. Twitter, Instagram, blogging, Facebook – all these things facilitate opportunities to communicate ideas and experiences with whomever you please. Or even just to put things out there and wait for a response. Good, bad, but definitely surprising.
We can all point and shoot. Our iPhones and BlackBerries now add our filters to create our vision of what we want our reality to be. So as I stand on a clifftop and take pictures and add my desired filter I am creating my own unique vision of what I see. Is it realistic? Does that matter to me? No, it is a moment in time, captured through my eyes and my choices, that creates my dialogue of what I would like you to see and how I will remember and document it. All very impressionistic. So at this very moment the whole theme of this digital issue was born.
The future seems to hold endless possibilities at the touch of a button. If you have Wi-Fi you can find anything: a restaurant, a plane ticket, love, sex – anything your little fingertip desires. Abbreviated language reigns supreme in this new world – LOLZ, ROFL, LMAO – all to save characters in communication. It’s the modern-day Morse code, hieroglyphics. Speed is everything.
Of course, I am quite old school, too. I still love to chat endlessly on the phone about not very much and meet people and catch up. It will never be enough for me to only use my digital platforms to communicate. Sadly, though, this mode of communication is rapidly becoming obsolete. No one has time any more to just shoot the breeze. What is becoming a reality is that fewer people are able to physically interact, or even dread physical interaction, without the initial buffer of introduction now available via the worldwide web. Phone-phobes are everywhere.
Whereas in the past there was real stigma attached to dating sites, only desperadoes frequented them. Now people feel so much more protected by being able to log their likes and dislike online to find a match and not “waste time” – their words, not mine – flirting a little, investing a little time in the art of seduction. It has all become much faster, much more pragmatic, much more ruthless even. More basic, too. Some sites have actually facilitated the possibility of no-strings-attached encounters. No fruitless investment: just scan methodically all the possibilities online until you encounter one that ticks all the boxes.
Professional photography, too, has been subject to massive changes and evolution, even since we began the magazine 12 years ago. The digital revolution had just begun and people were starting to use digital instead of film. I remember lamenting the passing of this old mechanical ideal of imperfection making an image perfect, the grain of the film, the limitations of the depth of field, the whole idea that a photographer had to be part of an elite to capture in image your imagination, the dream. It was never my goal to find flawless, perfect beauty. As time has gone on and photographers and true artists have been able to harness and truly capitalise on all these digital possibilities, explorers and pioneers appeared in this field who really have created captivating and unique work that has found another level – Nick Knight, who we interviewed for the issue, and who for me was one of these pioneers of this new digital age. As early as the 1980s he recognised that sharing his process by documenting his creative journey was important and necessary. Then he went on to create what we now know as SHOWstudio. Where each image is never what it seems. Always providing creative challenges, which he relishes and we benefit from and enjoy. He documents all his shoots with livestreaming; he manipulates each image to give a moment that is personal to him; he seeks and shares with us, all the while Instagraming everything that inspires him. He is my ideal of how all these platforms can be harnessed and made unique to each person who chooses to use them, incorporating them as part of their process. With these creative intimacies that he shares, he shows how it’s not just about the final image, but the journey and the process to get there, with no fear of plagiarism or copycats, as ultimately the final image is still born from his final vision. Total inspiration.
Everything in the issue is a digital discussion – dating, Nick Knight and his reasons that compel him to move forward with all the possibilities the digital universe has to offer. The models and the modelling industry, as a result of their media platforms, have become superstars: a new breed of super-cyber girls. The age of the super-cyber models has dawned, in which an agency can now demand a higher yield for a girl based on her digital following. The agents have found a way to financially harness a girl’s popularity and it can be tangibly monitored and justified to a potential client.
This is the future. Like it or not, it is here to stay. The clever ones will harness and blossom and cultivate a unique way to use these platforms to communicate their vision, and the dinosaurs who buck with hatred will reminisce about the good old days and become extinct. A brilliant quote from Nick Knight, my creative digital oracle, that sums up the haters is: “It would be like refusing the invention of the car and insisting on travelling everywhere by horse and carriage. This is the future. Be smart, make it work for you.”
SOPHIA NEOPHITOU-APOSTOLOU
Editor-in-Chief
