Visura Magazine has come out every two months for a year and issue 7 now out is another great one, although I did spend a couple of days wondering why I couldn’t manage to see any pictures. I’m afraid at first I just thought that although they’d sent me an e-mail they hadn’t quite got the magazine on line!
It’s a flash-based site, and if like me you like to have several browser windows open on your screen you are likely to find the same problem that I had. Their web designer has placed the ‘Enter‘ link off to the right of the screen but decided not to provide a scroll-bar. I can scroll up and down without one, but not to the right. This link will take you inside, and once you do get in, you will see it tells you to use screen resolution of at least 1440 x900 for best viewing, but unless you are you probably won’t have made it to see this advice.
Visura is “an online, invitation only publication that features personal projects chosen by artists themselves“. It doesn’t have any advertising but does have a number of media partners, including the Lucie Foundation, the NYT Lens blog and Miguel Garcia-Guzman’s Exposure Compensation blog and the Summer Show and Aftermath projects.
Issue 7 includes intriguing multiple images from Tokyo by Miguel Rio Branco, a lengthy set of pictures of the second beat generation of Larry Fink‘s youth (the sixties), when he was a pot-smoking Marxist with a Rolleiflex his daddy had given him, pictures from a strife-torn Ingushetia by Andrea Bruce, more fine black and white in Joan Liftin‘s ‘Runaway’, a superb view of the magical island of Chiloe by Brigitte Grignet, Donna Ferrato with her M6 on the streets of Tribeca. There is also a large selection of Simon Robert‘s pictures from ‘We English’. I think these images, shot on 4×5″, work better when seen as large gallery prints, but on screen many seem rather dull. Other photographers featured include Visura’s Head Copy Editor John Sevigny, Ken Van Sickle and Evan Abramson.
Thank you for your extensive post on Visura Magazine. I will definitely bring your concerns up to Graham who designs the site.
I appreciate that you take the time to constructively criticize the site. This is an opportunity for us to listen and find ways to enhance what was only created as a vehicle to unify, support and dialogue with artists and people from all over the world. Still, we are aware that there is much we can do to grow, like making the forum even more accessible and easier to navigate.
Thanks again for this great feedback.
Sincerely,
Adriana Teresa