Magazines we like: Beyond

There are a few not-for-profit magazines that deliberately set out not to carry advertising; most do so because it is not to be had or because they lack the resources to pursue it. Beyond magazine, a photography magazine based in Calgary, is one example of a magazine that tried it, didn't like it, and stopped doing it. It was featured on Utne Reader's website recently in an item which said...

"Beyond is an independent, nonprofit Canadian magazine that's ad-free, so the works of photographers and visual artists don't compete with pages of branded images. Nevertheless, what stood out for me in the latest issue were two artists' depictions of commodities. Elise Engler's tiny illustrations of everyday objects from her collection Everything That I Own (13,127 drawings of Engler's possessions) span two pages. The images look like cards from a complex game of Memory. I stared in awe at a two-page photograph by Chris Jordan of a vast sprawl of junked cell phones -- a different and disturbing take on the ubiquity of objects. According to Beyond's website, creating a magazine sans ads is in part about promoting simplicity, not as commodity but as human responsibility. -- Evelyn Hampton.

The magazine itself has an amusing manifesto, explaining why it's doing what it's doing (that is besides publishing the work of art photographer Karen Bubas, photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado and author and film maker Nelofer Pazira.

We are uncomfortable with hosting a conversation about beauty, hope, social justice, and meaning that is presented side by side with messages that are in direct contradiction to what we are trying to portray. We value so many things and feel that the artists and poets of our time are being co-opted to produce various kinds of advertising instead of art. How could we present an article about child labor next to an ad for something that may use that kind of labor to produce its goods? We see magazines promoting "simplicity" as a commodification rather than a human responsibility. That doesn't make sense to us.

Seriously, we think there is something kind of dangerous about seeking advertising as the only way to create something anymore. It can be a way but should it be the only way? So we thought we'd like to try this. Someone once said "Be the group that tried." And so we'll keep trying.