VBIQVE Magazine

ART // PHOTOGRAPHY // GRAPHIC DESIGN // CULTURE // LITERATURE

SUMMER

2011 ISSUE

VBIQVE

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Dear Readers:

I am thrilled to introduce you to the first issue of VBIQVE Magazine. The random firing of a synapse during a bored work day has finally evolved into the rough form of what I hope will be one of many more editions to come. Since we have passed the first hurdle of launching, many more have come into sight but they will be easier to overcome with our mo-mentum. This momentum is, of course, from everyone featured in our very first issue. Without you, we would still be in the confines of my brain.

The magazine is still in its infancy and so may change direction once it has matured but there are some aspects that will not change. At our core, we want to show artists’ work in a cohesive, plural manner. I believe a story, theme, or style is better magnified and isolated with more than one piece of work. By exhibiting a series of related pieces, an artist has a greater chance of exploring their definition as creators.

Even though our first issue primarily exhibits photography, we invite other types of artist to submit pieces in our next issue. In our ideal future, we see all forms of expression being shown in this magazine, be it literature, graphic design, paintings, or anything else your beautiful minds can con-ceive.

Please enjoy our first issue,

Ryan BagleyEditor

Cover image by: Pato Hernan

LETTER FROMTHE EDITOR

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ALEX CATT

I grew up in the south of England on the edge of the New Forest, in a small market town called Ringwood. Currently I am in my second year at Brighton University studying BA (Hons) Photography. Before this course I completed a foundation year in Photography at the Arts Institute Bournemouth.

AGETwenty-one

CITY/COUNTRYCurrently Brighton, UK

WEBSITEwww.alexcattphoto.co.uk

WORK TITLEIndustry

PHOTOGRAPHER

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I tend to strive in places that are alien to me. I see differently in these places, they are exciting and new in contrast to the mun-dane dull scenes in which I have grown up around. I seem to make images best alone, I find it hard to take photographs if I am around a lot of people and I think this solitude is reflected in many of my images.

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The series of images you can see here I recently made from a small road-trip journey along the coastal towns of France and Belgium. Simply titled‚ Industry‚ it is a series of photographs based in and around these areas which comments on the effect consumerism, industrialization and shipping have on the natural environment.

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The images have a feeling of emptiness but due to the photographs indexical nature show the world how I see it. A lack of human life relates back to what I previously mentioned about solitude. I see this series of the start of something larger and plan to work around this idea in the future expanding this body of work along port towns in England this side of the channel as well as expanding what I currently have from the France/Belgium side.

...due to the photographs

indexical nature,

[the images] show the world

how I see it.

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GERALDINE VAN WESSEMAGETwenty-six

CITY/COUNTRYBelgium

WEBSITEwww.geraldinevanwessem.com

PHOTOGRAPHERGeraldine van Wessem was born in 1984 in Dendermonde, Belgium. She graduated in 2006 as a Master in English and Dutch philology at the University of Ghent, Belgium. After that she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. In September 2010 she obtained the degree of Master in Visual Arts (Photography) with great distinction. From September to December 2010 Geraldine did an internship at Flaggfabrikken Center for Photography and Contemporary Art in Bergen, Norway. She now lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.

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My work revolves around the subjective observation of people, places and light. I attempt to re-cord colours, moments, textures, impressions and emotions whilst never losing my aesthetic focus.

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When it comes to making portraits, my aim is to create a harmonic bal-ance between what is invisible (a moment of vulnerability, an aspect of someone‚ personality) and visible features. There is a big emphasis on aesthetic harmony. For the latter, I attempt to fully employ all photo-graphic means: through color, natural light and detail I try to visualize how I go through someone, beauty and appearance. The result is not a social study, but a personal experience of, and curiosity for, the beauty and the existence of the other.

Through color, natural light and detail I try to visualize how I go through someone, beauty and appearance.

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Some of the people I photograph are close friends of mine; others are strangers. The whole body of work is created in an intuitive manner. I take my time while making a portrait. I demand complete attention of the person portrayed, but we always work in relaxed circumstances. I take between 12 to 18 images during one session. I do my best to put the person portrayed at ease.

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It is a personal experience from both sides, since I feel as vulnerable as them when I am working. I am sometimes insecure, clumsy and often a bit overwhelmed by the person in front of me. I like to consider the relationship between me and the person portrayed. An interaction is being established during a session. To portray somebody is to involve in a kind of relation. A relation may engender intimacy. I try to live to see what moves people to this intimacy and what my position is in that. I like the possibility of being able to break through the surface of an interpersonal relation-ship and go to the inner human space. It is a matter of curiosity as well, because somehow a person appeals to me and I want to get to know him or her (better).

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JIN ZHUAGETwenty-seven

CITY/COUNTRYSan Francisco, USA

WEBSITEwww.killeryellow.com

WORK“Unsorted Resistors” 2009“Engineering Utility Wall” 2010“Music Annex” 2010“Engineering Workbench” 2010

I am an artist working primarily in photography, though my newest work explores video projection onto non-conventional materials. My process is grounded in celebrating the striking details that go unno-ticed in everyday scenes. I prefer to work in communities I am familiar with, whether it’s the basement studios of KZSU or Mission District of San Francisco, but my recent work on how the Western environment intersects with consumer culture, development and resource use has expanded the scope of my vision.

PHOTOGRAPHER/DJ

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For five years I have volunteered and chewed the fat at KZSU. Anyone can walk into this little basement freeform college radio station to train as an on-air DJ, listen for hours to the enormous music library, and dig around the innards of the technical infrastructure.

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Analog radio is almost an anachronism, KZSU is an anachronism - vinyl is alive and well, punk rock is not dead. But it persists because it is populated by people who love, who are obsessed with, music.

The DJs who stay - and some stay for more than 20 years. Freeform radio breeds eclecticism, eccentricity, chaos. All staff are volunteers and success of any initiative depends on the dedication of individuals.

There is utter freedom, which easily morphs into disarray.Loose ends are everywhere - abandoned projects, piles of outdated technology, works in progress. I can look and look and look. And I love to look, at the strange and at the banal. Each frame is a recreation of the experience of sticking one’s nose into a patch of light or a little corner of the world. Of feeling immersed in the place as a small, private moment.

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JORDANHUISMANAGETwenty-eight

CITY/COUNTRYAmsterdam, The Netherlands

WEBSITEwww.jordihuisman.nl

WorkOn Hold/Laid Off

PHOTOGRAPHER

Jordi Huisman was born in Almere, The Netherlands in 1982. After a BSc at Engineering, Design & Innovation he attended the KABK art academy in The Hague to study photography. He has been working as a freelance photographer since 2005. He’s done several group and solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, the UK and Ukraine. His free work is often about change, in the broader sense of the word.

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The series is about the town of Janesville, Wisconsin and their former GM plant. The oldest GM plant in the country, mainly SUVs were produced there. Because of declining sales and the finan-cial crisis, it had to close down in 2009. The workers were laid off, the factory is on hold until further notice.

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I wanted to document the situation in Janesville late 2009, and see who those laid off workers were. It turned out to be tough times for those people, with not a lot of jobs in or around Janesville. Not only the GM factory had to close down, but also local suppliers had gone bankrupt, leaving even more people unemployed. Some GM workers were offered to go and work in another GM plant, a seven-hour drive away. Moving there often wasn’t an option, since the housing market was bad as well.

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Some GM work-ers were offered to go and work in another GM plant, a seven-hour drive away. Moving there often wasn’t an option, since the housing market was bad as well.

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MATT PAGEAGEThirty-one

CITY/COUNTRYNorth Salt Lake, Utah, USA

WEBSITEwww.thisismattsart.blogspot.com

ILLUSTRATOR

Matt Page is an illustrator and graphic designer in Salt Lake City, UT, where he was born and raised. He studied art at Salt Lake Community College and the University of Utah, and is also known on-line as Matsby. His collections include records, CDs, DVDs, books, trading cards, comic books, action figures, magazines, and original art.

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My art is a map of my life. Each piece is a landmark of my feelings, interests, desires, fears, and frustrations at the time it was created. Looking over my work, you will see subject matter is as varied as the medium and style I use for each piece. You will find explorations of popular culture, sexuality, faith, politics, and anything else that crosses my path.

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The only thing I really try to avoid with my art is repeating myself. I once read a quote that was attributed to the musician, Brian Eno, which reads ‚“Whatever worked last time, never do it again,” and that idea has been stuck in my head ever since.

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Recently I have begun to use my art as a means of celebrating my Mormon faith and culture. I like to take familiar images and people from Mormon history and ap-proach them in a style not normally associated with this subject matter. By taking these icons and placing them in an unusual context, I hope people will be able to see them in a different light.

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Like taking the stories I’ve heard each week in Sunday School since I was a child and retelling them in a different language, I hope people will find something new in the translation.

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PATOHERNANAGEThirty-one

CITY/COUNTRYSpain

WEBSITEwww.polgaroid.comwww.flickr.com/photos/polgaroid

WorkMonegros

PHOTOGRAPHER

I live in Spain. I like music, square format, food, photo books, geometry, coffee, internet, medium format pho-tos, read, drive by night, lonely trees, travel, trucks’ typography, make photos and probably dust in my pictures. I am autodidact photographer.

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Monegros is a large desert of stones and sand, a landscape dominated by vast expanses of desert that suffers chronic drought and high summer temperatures. The weather and the land quality (chalk and calcareous) infuses this desert appearance, making it an almost untouched landscape and one of the oldest in Europe.

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The few human intervent ions and the enormous pla ins give a typical ar id landscape with a constant ‘hor izonta lness’.

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This is the main attraction, the horizon. Clean, clear, constant. A tree here, aforgotten house there,a tractor run. No more is needed.

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A tree in the middle of nowhere, a freshly harvested field, a few blocks of straw, a crumbling hut, dirt roads and always the horizon.

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Over the years barely changed a ground unimproved and inert, a wasteland, a badland with the horizon always well defined.

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RAPHAELBOURELLYAGETwenty-seven

CITY/COUNTRYParis, France

WEBSITEwww.raphaelbourelly.com

WorkMongolie

PHOTOGRAPHER

Raphael Bourelly (born in 1984) is a French self-taught photographer, working and liv-ing in Paris. He quickly angled his work toward urban, and more precisely the relation between human and his envi-ronment. Exploring afoot big areas, places where people live, as well as places where few people go, he tries to use light and emptiness to relate stories about loneliness. But also to bring out certain poetry into the moments when nothing happens.

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I tried to illustrate the wealth, the complexity and the beauty of this mysterious country trapped between China an Rus-sia over three weeks of travel.

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I don’t pretend that I understand the country or people, it has to instead be taken as a sample. A trace of myexperience there.

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RYANBAGLEYAGETwenty-three

CITY/COUNTRYHawaii, USA

WEBSITEwww.ryanbagley.com

WorkThe New Right

PHOTOGRAPHER

Ryan Bagley is a freelance photographer based in Hawaii. Born in 1988 he graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science in the spring of 2010 from BYU - Hawaii. Following a two year post at his University’s newspaper he continues to work on various regional projects.

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The Davis County 9/12 group is a small part of the larger American conservative move-ment gripping the nation. Aim-ing to curb rabid government spending and promoting fiscal responsibility the movement is certainly reasonable in its goals.

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However, what I saw in media coverage of the Tea Party illustrated a picture of predominantly old, white, racist and most of all, angry citizens hell bent on changing the direction they feared the nation was traveling.

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In my own area I instead met cordial individuals having meet-ings about sensible concerns with only a few rare breaks in re-spect that were quickly hushed by the majority in attendance. It was amazing to see real people in a real political movement out-side the stereotype which I had thought was so factual.

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Even if I do not share the same political beliefs as members of the Tea Party, it was fascinating to accom-pany them throughout the many monotonous hours that political participation consists of.

When the news highlights zip across the screen of an election victory or loss a person rarely thinks of what was involved.

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The Saturday taken away walk-ing door to door asking resi-dents for their vote or the hours of sitting at call centers are never revealed.

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SEAN SCHMIDTWORKAn American Matter

PHOTOGRAPHER

I am a Citizen of Chicago, IL and the son of a midwestern forklift salesman. I have recently been accepted into Graduate Studies at Columbia College for my MFA in Photography.

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Over the last three years I have been pursuing a body of work on the contemporary Ameri-can landscape. 'An American Matter' considers animate and inanimate objects with equal care, and

apprehends a milieu which is both bold and soft spoken.

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The project explores curiosity and tension in our contemporary American condition, and is inspired by the human effort for happiness.

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TING SHENAGETwenty-one

CITY/COUNTRYChicago, Illinois, USA

WEBSITEwww.ting-shen.com

PHOTOGRAPHER

Ting Shen is a freelance photog-rapher based in Chicago. Born in 1989 to a small family of five in Taiwan he came to the United States during an early age and experienced a strong emotional attachment to the American culture.

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With influence from American contemporary painter Edward Hopper and photographer Robert Frank, he is fascinated with the beauty of rural North America, the scene of remnants from the great westward expan-sion, and the true sprit of the American Dream.

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Beside his job with the campus newspaper/photojournalistic work, his personal projects fo-cus on documenting the human interaction with the surrounding natural environments and their individual personalities. He is currently enrolled at Columbia College Chicago, working on a B.F.A. in Photography.

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There’s always something distant away, no matter where you go, occupied by the empty space of an open sky.

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$50 prize for beingselected as the Cover image

Due September 15

[email protected] form info at:www.vbiqvemag.com

VBIQVE Magazine

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