Horses Think

I have been a subscriber to numerous magazines over the years and throughout my life.

As a teenager I was an early reader of Details Magazine and of course I subscribed to Rolling Stone.

As an MFA graduate living in New York I subscribed to PDN, Blind Spot, Aperture, Art Forum, Wired, W Magazine and of course The New Yorker.

These days I subscribe to The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine and Art Forum. My subscription to Aperture just ended and I did not renew. I also tried Time Out on a free trial basis but cancelled that as I didn’t really read it and felt it was a waste of energy to have it delivered here.

I have also been a New York Times subscriber on and off for the past ten years. At one point I even got the paper delivered each and every day but now and for the past few years it’s been a weekend only affair, mainly for the magazine, the Arts & Leisure section and the book review.

Yesterday I received my last issue of Vanity Fair and I am thinking I probably will not renew. This has got me thinking about magazines and the terrible state they are in and how I myself am partly to blame, sort of.

First let me say that I love getting things in the mail, doesn’t everyone? Besides the endless stream of bills, mail is one of the greatest things ever invented and there is nothing like opening up the mailbox on a Monday afternoon and finding the weekly subscriptions waiting there.

One of the reasons I probably subscribe to magazines in the first place is to make sure something comes in the mail on a regular basis, it gives me something to look forward to. Somehow that’s important as it strangely validates the idea that I’m here, that I exist.

The way I see it now, the only magazines I really need and want to have all the time are The New Yorker and Art Forum.

The New Yorker is a classic and I just love it although I often fall behind and spend too much time catching up. I almost wish it came twice a month instead of four times. The double issues are a relief, sort of.

One strange thing I find myself doing is scheduling trips or flights out of the country on a Monday night or Tuesday so that I don’t miss on getting my weekly issue before I leave. Also, The New Yorker is one of those magazines that is so easy to carry around, a huge plus when compared to other heavier more glossy magazines.

Art Forum is really just mandatory to keep on top of what’s going on but in truth I have fallen in love with Book Forum, the supplement that comes with Art Forum a couple of times a year. I love Book Forum and I highly advise reading it. In general though, Art Forum is a read at home only sort of magazine, I rarely take it with me.

New York magazine is great for the pictures and for Jerry Saltz, who is the main art writer there. I can get Saltz’s writing online but I still prefer to see photographs in print instead of online. In a printed magazine it’s better to look through the entire thing, while online, one chooses what one wants to see. In a way, there is less surprise online and I like to be surprised. Another easy magazine to carry around.

I have decided that Vanity Fair is the kind of magazine I only need certain issues of and definitely don’t need all the time. There is too much for me to read and if I have to choose between reading The New Yorker vs. Vanity Fair, I’ll always choose The New Yorker. I’ll still pick it up on the newsstand to browse the photographs though.

W is a magazine I sort of miss. It’s basically a guilty pleasure in that I’m not a fashion photographer nor do I care about big name brand fashion, but I love being able to see how photography in advertising evolves each season. They also have such a crazy roster of regular photographers and make use of some great artists like Larry Sultan and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. W is basically a monthly coffee table book and I just look at the photos, it’s almost worth subscribing to again. Another stay at home magazine, not only for its weight and size, as you won’t see me pulling it out on the subway.

As an aside, the only other fashion magazine that I enjoy flipping through on a continual basis is Italian Vogue, probably the best magazine for fashion photography along with W. Needless to say, I don’t need a subscription as it’s too expensive but I still check it out once in a while.

This all brings me back to my responsibility and guilt regarding all this. I love magazines but in the end I need to decide what’s worth reading all the time, thereby warranting a subscription, and what’s not essential, thereby warranting an occasional browse at the local newsstand or online.

Recently though, it struck me that in general magazine subscriptions are incredibly cheap, somewhere between $10-40, depending on the magazine. That’s not a lot of money in the long run and the more subscribers magazines have the more money they can charge for advertising (at least that’s how I think magazines work in general but I know it’s more complex than that).

The more money the magazines bring in, the better stories they can cover and the more assignments they can afford to give out. As I see it, it’s a win-win situation for all of us photographers trying to work editorially. So every time I decide not to renew a magazine these are the thoughts that go through my mind, should I cancel or should I keep up my support in hopes that it will be better for everyone all around.

This conversation neglects to discuss the other problems going on with magazines today as there are too many one could choose to discuss.

As a photographer, one of the biggest problems I always noticed with magazines was how they managed their budgets and spent unwisely. I remember being told many times that I could pick up film before a shoot at the lab I was using to process. The lab would bill the magazine directly for film and processing. The problem with this is that the labs always charged way more than a photo store would for film and polaroid. A small thing in the grand scheme of things but a big waste of money nonetheless.

Lately, the editorial work I have been doing has been more flat fee all inclusive budgets and I might prefer it. Again it seems like a good deal for everyone, the magazine doesn’t over spend what they can’t afford and the photographer can evaluate if they can do the job for the money offered. It’s a pretty simple exchange and it seems to work as long as the budget isn’t too low.

In the end I don’t have any real solutions for the magazine industry, but I do think that if you love a particular magazine you should spend the $20 or so and get a subscription to show your support, they really need it right now.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Culture, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.