Being There

After a long and ram­bling post the other day, I’ll keep it short this time — I have a cou­ple of read­ings worth your time. I’m not totally con­vinced by the online mag­a­zine. It’s a for­mat in infancy, the kinks haven’t been worked out yet. And yet, this week two online mag­a­zines caught my attention:

First up, 7.7, a web­site pro­duced by a col­lec­tive of pho­tog­ra­phers and photo-pros from Barcelona. Of artic­u­lar note is Close to Heaven by Ernesto Ramirez (reportage num­ber 4).  This is a sur­pris­ingly sub­tle and inti­mate med­i­ta­tion on the flat-top roof. Shot in black and white panorama for­mat, the series explores the ele­vated sanc­tu­ary of the big-city rooftop. As a side note, to my neigh­bors in Mon­treal: your mid-night roof-top soc­cer was not equally edifying.

Sec­ond, a web mag called 100 Eyes. Pro­duced by pho­tog­ra­pher Andy Levin, 100 Eyes pub­lishes col­lec­tions of pho­to­graphic essays on a topic or theme. This edi­tion is called The Migrants. It is a brood­ing, scathing look at one of the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of globalization. More peo­ple than ever find them­selves stuck and work­ing in a limbo; divorced from their homes, them­selves, and com­mu­nity. Whether a migrant or not, global migra­tion is chang­ing the world we live in. 1000 Eyes: The migrants is a crit­i­cal depic­tion of the real and per­sonal effects of migra­tion, and, by extension, the dan­gers of glob­al­iza­tion. In por­tray­ing the iso­la­tion of this dislocation, Lorena Ros’ series on Niger­ian women is par­tic­u­larly damning.