Blueeyes Magazine: An intro

Sometimes when I meet new photographers they get really animated and excited to talk with me. This, however, is almost never because of my own shooting, but because of the other hat that I wear in professional photography as the creator and editor in chief of Blueeyes Magazine. The exchange that occurs is extremely flattering and I'm very happy to receive thanks and support for our celebration of an incredibly difficult and important genre of photography (more on that later), but I'm stuck every single time that their admiration has almost nothing to do with me... which is exactly how it should be. They love the creation of a place that loves documentary project work...

Creating a home for the photography that I immensely respect has been a very important part of my life for almost four years. As I've watched Blueeyes grow its been astounding to witness how much people in the industry were looking for a place to grab on to. And one of the reasons that I resuscitated this blog was to likewise create a place to talk about Blueeyes and what I think its importance is... in a hope to help create a more open and valuable dialogue in anticipation of bringing that feedback into the magazine sometime soon. Therefore, this is the intro of a recurring segment where I'll talk about Blueeyes. If you have something in particular you are interested in learning about, just leave a comment.

To begin with, Blueeyes was created in 2003 by myself via inspiration from my time at the University of Missouri, where I studied photojournalism amongst a unique and incredibly talented group of friends. We were deeply moved by long-term project photography while students and became obsessed with trying to create our own personal visions of issues and places that meant something to us. But after trying to make our own projects, we were stuck in figuring out what to do with them next. Tragically, over the last 20 years the space reserved in newspapers and magazines, especially in the American market, for serious documentary photography work has dwindled. Actually, that's hardly the word for it -- "lost" is a lot closer to the truth, sadly. And because of this its become extremely difficult to find a place to publish even incredibly good long-term project work. (This is relevant because the point of journalism and photography, as I see it, is to share it with as many people as possible and therefore complete its mission as a medium of communication... this is something I could and will write a few thousand words about, but not now).

Therefore Blueeyes was born out of passion, frustration, need, and zero dollars -- which pointed me directly towards publishing online. For the first 2 years or so it was basically a one-man show where I was the editor, designer, writer, and handy man all at once. During that time we published mostly the work of friends, and friends of friends, and began to attract a modest and ever growing amount of attention and support. There were some awards along the way, including a large one from NPPA's BOP (the only competition that Blueeyes has entered to date, because its free), and the magazine started to gain momentum and a sort of street cred as a place that was trying to do something new and passionate (more on that later too). After 10 issues over a couple of years I was pretty exhausted of trying to run an emerging web publication on my own, especially as my freelance career grew more demanding. In 2005 Blueeyes took a long nap while I tried to figure out what should come next for the magazine, or if it should keep sleeping forever.

The months of rest did the magazine and myself a lot of good, and that fall I began recruiting several friends to help me try to guide Blueeyes towards its enormous potential. Soon after the Blueeyes was a changed place... it now had an editorial board, a staff, and a well-designed and thoughtful design system. In the spring of 2006 we re-launched, had a fun party in NYC to celebrate, and began introducing new features. Currently the magazine is waiting to launch its 14th issue and is developing several more new features to create new ways for people to interact with the photography and create more dialogue about the stories we feature. In short, its an exciting time for Blueeyes but one that takes an incredible amount of energy and effort. Very certainly this is not a one-man show any longer, which is extremely important for Blueeyes' future and my sanity. I'm joined by 2 extremely talented colleagues on the editorial board, who together vote on what gets in each issue, and who are Matthew Ratajczak and Chris Vivion. Additionally we are very lucky to also have technical lead Seth Bro and communications director Jill Thomas on board with us, making the rest of us look way better than would otherwise be the case. The 4 of us work together to create the magazine in addition to our regular jobs and lives. Neither us nor our contributors are paid anything for their efforts... its truly a labor of love.

So that is what Blueeyes is, why it was created, a brief (boring?) timeline of its short history, and where it stands now. To round out this intro post I'd like to talk a bit more personally about what I feel are the main difficulties and pleasures in leading Blueeyes. My next post will deal with what the magazine publishes, why its important, and why its often so hard to find.

Recreating the magazine has been a fun and extremely frustrating process that I'm only now getting my grasp around. Last fall when I began looking for friends to help me out, I had a really difficult time finding not only people who I felt confident about their talents and respected their commitment to truly important work (admiration and criticism are not the same thing), but I was also looking for a range of perspectives on documentary photography that would keep the magazine fresh and encourage us to stretch the idea of what was "documentary." That diversity I sought and found has been extremely difficult to later hold together, which while unsurprising has recast my own position as well. When I created an editorial board I was doing so in an effort to make the magazine not just my own, but all of ours together. But to hold everyone together and keep the magazine moving forward -- without the presence of any type of monetary return, which is why magazines are actually published -- I've had to remain at the helm of the ship and continue to play traffic cop and keep everyone else on task and in communication. It sounds naive that I thought I could have it another way, and it was, but I hoped for a different model than I ended up with nonetheless.

Despite the potential wrangling of cats metaphor in trying to keep myself and the editorial board moving forward and connected even while we are all the time extremely busy and traveling, Blueeyes is wonderful to be a part of. I think my favorite thing is the ability get my hands dirty digging into pictures and projects and connecting with what it is about photography that really moves me. On a daily basis I'm honored by some photographer often half-way across the world sincerely submitting their work to the magazine and asking for our feedback on their efforts. To this day I still try to send my feedback and suggestions to each submission, which is pretty fucking insane at this point.

Another great part of Blueeyes is simply being a member of the staff and our giant debates and arguments in considering what will run in each issue. Some of us are extremely traditional, others more open, and the back and forth is what the magazine a rare place on the web. Each member of the stafff all want to be amazed and reminded of what exactly about documentary photography is important. And though sometimes the last a-ha moment feels too far in your memory, it always happens again, and you open a project that connects you to the world more fully. And that connection is truly what its all about, both inside and ouside the photography community. Blueeyes connects us as staff, and our contributors, to the rest of the world who are passionately trying to do this in their own ways. When the issues are sometimes not that much fun to put together, or things are falling a part in any number of ways, I think about the ways that what I'm trying to do connects me to other people who share in my belief in the power of photography.

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