When is a magazine not a magazine? How do we define a magazine that atypically eschews the condensation of abrasive typography and celebrity imagery? Over the years, only one publication has superseded this approach by applying a contemporary composition of a photographer from within its pages.
When Australian publication Doingbird established itself in 2001 by editor Malcolm Watt and Australian photographer Max Doyle, there would be a seismic shift of style, aesthetics and taste. Other titles of a predominant female demographic encased personal style – clothes intertwined with fashion, the notion of dressing in a uniformed matter took greater pace. But the subservient and obedient nature of collating fashion runway images in an overgrown lattice of disparate interviews and beauty products were positively charged advertisements representing their clients. For the first time, arguably in any Australian produced periodical, the greatest impetus would make its readers inquisitive, inquire and take a curious nature in all facets of design. May it be the correlating linkages of Architecture, Music and Fashion, both Doyle and Watt brought forward a fresh and distinctive vehicle of contemporary ideas.
Anne Marsh and Melissa Miles from Melbourne’s Monash University’s Faculty of Art and Design conversed, “Has everyone noticed how photomedia has taken over the galleries and museums as well as our lives? There’s been a seismic shift in the art world. Contemporary photography is the new, clean avant-garde.” The presentation of photographic works in artist books and such seminal publications like Avalanche created by Willoughby Sharp and Elizabeth Beer from 1970 to 1976 enabled individual artists like Jospeh Beuys, Sol LeWitt and Laurence Weiner explore their work in an alternative perception. No longer squarely aimed for a pictorial critique, the intimacy of these artists speaking in written interviews of Avalanche would entail a visual and visceral impact on readers.
In Doingbird, a similar metholodgy of cerebral interviews and artistic explorations in photographic imagery prospers. Yet one crucial element preserved by Watt and Doyle are the emblematic front covers, sometimes distilled by a piece of American vernacular, or precious jewellery. For fashion, as deeply rooted in the language and existence throughout the time of Doingbird’s production, the evocation of both skin and clothing appears ubiquitous in our contemporary society.
It raises Doingbird desensitises yet amplifies and emphatically raise cultural importance in the createurs of fashion. The youthful legacy that is being imparted by Nicholas Ghiesquere, the unquestionable influence of Belgian designer Raf Simons, the euophoric emotional discharge of Ann Demeuleemeester’s work, leaves an indeible mark on just how the creation of clothes is no different than the creation of photography or any other medium. It is a process of creative problem solving using materials such as fabric, chemical and geometric instruments.
Back in October 2005, Melbourne’s national newspaper The Age reported the conventional and seemingly unaging publishing stragedy of beauty advertising, affixed with celebrity news and mixed-matched relationship advice. This would not be the same straedgy undertaken by Watt. As editor he said in the article, “Max (Doyle) is a photographer so he was a great judge of quality and art, and I’d worked in design for independent mags. We immediately pursued editorial from all over the world. We chased people we admired. We pursued people that aren’t attainable. We wanted it to be about quality and originality. We wouldn’t be like some magazines that are compromised, basically by their bottom line.” His inspiration translating Doingbird into a compedidum abundant with quality ensued that same art quality of American art journals with a perpetual command. The results speak for themselves. From its first inception back in 2001 to now its recent March release of its current issue #15, the matte gloss text pages with a heavier silky laminated cover aim to hold cultural permanence of its content. Its content seemingly held together by a diagonal striking fluoro cover band, releasing intrepid, adventurous, graceful, elegant and ambient wonder.
Doingbird’s current cover price increased a mere two dollars but even this increase placed heavy production costs. Watt anguished at the increased costs but neither has it dampened the publication’s deep-seated loyal readers. Of course advertising content within Doingbird assist with its production though the personally chosen pages of advertising but appear to be cultural artifacts themselves. They have included Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Gucci and Burberry in the past.
More recently when issue Fourteen was spotted on the bookshelves, tensions had been relieved. Squashing quells that the magazine could have potentially folded. Yet this issue comprised of a spellbinding dossier. Its front cover with Magosia Bela adorned with precious neck collar beads by Ann Demeulemeester and waist shreathed white and black dress also by Demeulemeester. The evolutionary works by British designer Christopher Kane preceded a still frame studio portrait of Bela photographed by Richard Avedon in 2000. A major interview between Mari Eastman and the Rodarte sisters chiseled a compelling backdrop of their American couture and the curation of Sonic Youth’s exibition by Roland Groeneboom in 2005. A condensation of such spellbinding and arresting beauty both in illustrative and textural form, where Jeff Koons’ work is celebrated, the ouerve of British designer Christopher Kane, the embellished young girls by Roe Ethridge and literary prose and artworks of Carol Bove and JH Engstrom.
Doingbird’s latest issue #15 with its atypical fashion cover transforms into a display of human anthropology. The black outlines and intense warpaint produced by Chanel makeup director Peter Philips is explained by Amelia Stein, “Warpaint was traditionally used as a way for warriors to galvanise themselves before battle. The secondary function was, of course, to strike fear into the hearts of enemies.” The stark, performing movements by Britt Maren photographed by American photographer Collider Shorr elevated the fashion pieces, they in turn became emblematic, a form of tribal identification. Schorr who is widely recognised for documenting the indoctrinations of male youths in sports such as wrestling and military uniforms casts the garments in which worn and also in her other photoshoot comprising of a Rodarte leather carved dress held less aesthetic value but formed a protective shield in which covered what was most fragile yet retained strength and mobility.
Fashion can be a tight-fisting tirade and of ensued cacophonies. The uncontrollable and clashing of clothes by different designers and the mixed-matched placements of interviews can produce a total dizzy spell. Doingbird does not conceal itself from the realities of nudity, the taste of sexuality, the emotional and impactful attachment to createurs of art and portraiture some of which maybe deemed by the public grotesque. Yet perhaps in one lucid quality Doingbird emits, in the spanning seduction of pages which contained palatable colours, the photosynthesis of flora, Japanese memento mori, object repository and the sensual nature of fabrics, fashion is inextricably linked to human culture in which what we are cultivated by.
Doingbird – www.facebook.com/doingbird
