Christopher Fields & Brendan Olley, Shed
After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2009, Brendan Olley and Christopher Fields opened the photography, production and co-working studio Shed, opposite Haggerston station in London. They share a keen interest in print culture, and the magCulture Shop has recently teamed up with them to offer a range of photographic magazines via their coffee/wine shop at the same site.
As ever, we asked Brendan and Christopher to select three publications.
A new issue: Satori #1
Being on site in our photography studios, we often get a sneak peek behind the scenes of images that appear in many high end fashion magazines, for this reasons, we find it hard to be allured by contemporary fashion images in general which is why we haven’t even contemplated using a ‘Fashion’ mag for our issue choice. We have chosen the beautifully simple Satori magazine. This magazine takes you to places beyond the environment of being cool and pretty, it really is a magazine for someone who needs space to contemplate the pace of life. We couldn’t think of a better magazine to read to lift ourselves out of the chaos of our current
political climate.
An old issue: South
Documenta is an arts festival in Germany that happens every five years. We last visited this very special place 5 years ago and have been sadly eagerly waiting for the next one to come about. Well it’s here, 2017, Documenta 14. In the run to the festival South magazine have been running little snippets of what to expect at the next show, the first magazine was released in 2014 and subsequently three more issues delivered in time for the show.
We like this magazine not only for the beautifully crafted pages, often jumping between newsprint, matt, glossy, fold outs, but mainly because these issues ( 2014,2015, 2016, 2017 ) only become even more relevant when the festival actually opens, so you can revisit the magazines for reference and context, we like how they have played with time to keep the magazine from just becoming a discarded object which happens to so much printed material. We are taking all our issues with us to the festival this year to revisit the issues.
And another thing: ‘Buried’, by Stephen Gill
Coming from a photography background, we collect photobooks avidly. We have nearly all of Stephen Gill’s photobooks. We are particularly proud to own a copy of his ‘Buried’ book, which he buried in Hackn ey on the current olympic stadium site, prior to it being built. Only 700 made and each book comes with a print and you are asked to ‘bury your own’. He leaves the books and photographs to get reclaimed by nature and then returns to dig them up at a later date. As a result the books and prints are warp and destroyed, ending up with an image that is totally unpredictable leaving the end photograph to chance.