Real Review #15
115 x 260 mm, 104 pages (with 1p Royal Mail Stamp inserted)
London, UK
Editor-in-chief: Jack Self
Associate editor: Maddy Weavers
Art direction and design: Colin Doerffler
Perennially popular at the magCulture shop, this ingeniously formatted magazine concerns architecture (and life) in its broadest sense: ‘What it means to live today’. This is an especially stark issue of Real Review—for the first time since the magazine’s inception, there is no black and orange face drawn by Nishant Choksi on the front cover. The absence is part of a total removal of images to mark the lack of representation of the violence being inflicted on the people of the Gaza Strip.
The publishers have reserved the right to reprint the issue with visuals included, should the possibility of liberty ‘solidify beyond its phantom form’.
‘It isn’t the representation of violence in the Gaza Strip that is so disturbing; it is the absence of representation. The grief and despair of a child is penetratingly real. The extreme realism of these events has now driven a wedge between our realities, material and social. The scale and speed of this suffering has destroyed our ability to sustain any belief in the symbolic values of “the international community” and “human rights”. We can no longer even pretend these ideas correlate to any form of reality. This issue of Real Review is dedicated to the current mood, the Phantom of Liberty.’
On the Journal:
Founder Jack Self shares the strategy behind the magazine’s cover designs.
READ MORE.