deep sleep mag: illusion

the lon­don based online pho­to mag has just pub­lished its 7th issue. it’s an inter­est­ing and unusu­al web­site. it’s run like a print peri­od­i­cal rather than a web­site in that it comes out ful­ly formed like a real print mag. on a new­stand. run by ian teh and oth­ers, deep sleep aims to show­case the best of con­tem­po­rary lon­don pho­tog­ra­phy from the per­son­al port­fo­lios of con­trib­u­tors. any­one can sub­mit work for pub­li­ca­tion, but it must be based around a pre-announced theme.

the cur­rent theme is ‘illu­sion’ and presents the work of a num­ber of very dis­parate young pho­tog­ra­phers. shad­ow play the work of marc fer­rante, presents spooky images of x‑ray hands in shad­ow the­atre pos­es. paula mccart­ney places craft store song­birds in (un) nat­ur­al set­tings. the images of bil­ly may­nard play with gen­der trans-sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and ambi­gu­i­ty. nathalie daoust presents images of a chair­man mao imper­son­ator in china.

in the edi­to­r­i­al the pub­lish­ers state that with all the doom and gloom around, they had decid­ed to do some­thing pos­i­tive and opti­mistic. the dec­la­ra­tion is some­what belied by the image cho­sen for the cov­er — a skele­tal x‑ray of crossed hands.

there’s some fas­ci­nat­ing work here, not least, that of vin­cent j. stok­er — a series of images, col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled het­ero­topia which explore the relent­less and slow recla­ma­tion of human­i­ty’s cul­tur­al and archi­tec­tur­al van­i­ties by the phys­i­cal forces of nature, grav­i­ty and time.

high­ly recommended

Deep Sleep Mag­a­zine — View Sto­ry.