In Ukrainian trains, it is a tradition that after boarding, passengers put on more comfortable clothes, change their shoes into slippers or lie barefoot, have dinner and a drink - and all this in cramped compartments. From that moment on everything seems possible. The notions of privacy and personal boundaries are dim in the train light...
Between rough rocks, dry vegetation and blindingly glistening water, a new kind of family was born - a group of friends who share adventure, community and light-heartedness. Kate Bellm has enchantingly captured the sun-drenched lives around the reef of her and her friends. The images make you dream of free diving, starry nights, warm sun-kissed skin and a playful life. "La Isla" is the island of Mallorca, their home of choice, but also the island in spirit, far from the social norms of normal society, that this group of friends have created for themselves. So take a deep breath and jump with them into a remote world made of psychedelic skies, otherworldly desert plants, trippy escapes and intimate encounters under the sea. Buy...
The Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992) coined the term "sentimental geography" to describe a unique artistic approach in which the ordinary is worthy of closer scrutiny. Puglia, an - at the time - off-the-beaten-track region at the very tip of the heel of Italy, with its whitewashed houses and streets, attracted the attention of this extraordinary photographer. Neglected by the rest of Italy, which looked only to the rich and profitable north of the country, he turned his camera to the everyday life of this sun-drenched land and its inhabitants. The minimalist yet sensitive photographs, with their elegant colour palette, evoke a sense of place known for its ancient architecture, crystal clear waters and arid olive groves. Buy...
From min-min, the sound of air screaming, to jin-jin, the sound of being touched for the very first time, from hi’sori, the sound of harbouring masochist tendencies, to mote-mote, the sound of becoming a small-town movie star, Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language. Polly Barton recounting her obsession with the country she moved to at the age of 21 - Japan. Irreverent, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is an exceptional debut about the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language. Buy...
Chris Kontos, editor-in-chief of Kennedy, has never been to New York, and yet the latest issue of Kennedy is dedicated to the city that never sleeps. "Even though I know more than a few things about New York, I resemble someone who has an unhealthy obsession over a person they have never met whereby everything they think about them is inevitably romanticised." And that's exactly how he got us. New York has always captured our imagination, and one of us has even had flights that, for other reasons, were never taken. So much is said and written about New York, it is the backdrop or the main character in so many films, that it has become its own myth. And since this projection is as much a part of New York as reality, you will find both in this issue of Kennedy. So you can travel in mind and feed your own imagination of the Big Apple, as Chris Kontos always does: "I was reluctant to visit NY for many years in case the myth of the city I had created crumbled like a sandcastle." Buy...
2020 - the year we read about clubbing instead of actually going clubbing. Club cultures have a rich local history and are at the same time much more differentiated geographically speaking than the story of the North Atlantic axis of Detroit–Chicago–Manchester–Berlin would have us believe. This book expands the focus. It looks at ten club capitals in Africa and Europe, reporting on different scenes from the big name to the supposedly peripheral. The local music stories, the scenes, the subcultures and their global networks are reconstructed in twenty-one essays and photo sequences. The tale they tell is one of clubs as laboratories of otherness, in which people can experiment with new ways of being and assert their claim to the city. Ten Cities is a nocturnal, sound-driven journey through ten social and urban stories from 1960 through to the present. Buy...
When you think of Naples' architecture, you might think of the crumbling but lively Spanish quarters, the classic buildings of the historic centre or the grand villas of Posillipo, but rarely do you think of modernism. But there are modernist buildings all over the city, in a very particular style that combines modernism with Mediterranean culture and local materials. Napoli - Super Modern, an atlas of eighteen significant buildings from 1930-1960, illustrated with site and floor plans, views, sections and photographs by celebrated photographer Cyrille Weiner, shows another side of this vibrant metropolis under Mount Vesuvius. Buy...
Cities are growing and changing faster than ever before, often leaving their citizens frustrated, and people are beginning to worry about saving buildings, empty spaces or even signage. Falsely articulated as a call for nostalgia, the discontent stems in fact from a leap of narrative growing unable to connect yesterday to tomorrow to affirm a sense of belonging. For Desired Landscapes preservation of the urban fabric is intended to leave behind clues of a lived past, as a sign of honesty. This wonderful little magazine is doing its part by preserving a moment in time of a place through storytelling. Buy...