My Favo(u)rite Magazine, update 2

Sales of My Favo(u)rite Magazine are continuing well, with just three Limited Editions packages left. The big news is that Monocle have ordered 80 copies to sell in their shops around the world. They’re buying them at full price, with all proceeds going to the fund. We’re very grateful to Tyler Brûlé and the Monocle team for their support.

Here’s the second of three texts we accidentally missed from the project. Apologies to Sue Apfelbaum in New York for omitting her contribution.

I’ve tried, although not always successfully, to save at least one copy of all my favorite magazines over the years. I’ve held onto a few Grand Royals, several Artbytes, one Brill’s Content. Tragically I have no copies of Might. Fortunately I saved this one issue of Index, and I’m so glad I did.

Index was like Interview, but featured the sorts of oddball talents that I wanted to read about. It ran from 1996 to 2005, and for some of those years was based in an art-gallery building a block away from the magazine I worked for at the time, RES. Index was like the girl at school that brought out my jealous and competitive side, but that I ultimately wished would befriend me. I admired its oversize glossy pages and access to fascinating people paired in interesting combinations.

This issue in particular was especially envy/admiration-inducing since it’s the Film Issue, and notice how many more women than men are featured in it. A magazine that celebrates women in film without making a special point of it or depicting them only as eye candy. Who does that today? This issue is all the more meaningful for being the first issue they produced after September 11, when everyone making magazines was trying to process what had happened and how to acknowledge, but not wallow or overemphasize it. I’m sure this issue was well under way by the time the towers fell, but there are thoughtful additions like a full-page tribute opposite the table of contents (above), where for all I know an advertiser had dropped out; the portraits of everyday New Yorkers, whom editor Cory Reynolds describes as “proud, defiant, resilient, dignified, and bold.” In her editor’s letter, all the way in the back on page 110, she also writes that since the attacks, “We’ve all been forced to think about things we haven’t wanted to confront and we’ve abandoned things that didn’t really matter.”

Here’s one thing I’m glad to not have abandoned.

Index
USA
Nov/Dec 2001
Selected by Sue Apfelbaum
Writer/editor
New York, USA
@sueapfe

Order your copy of My Favo(u)rite Magazine, in support of Bob Newman, from the magCulture shop.