Sanna Berger is the curator and editor of TOURIST magazine, new to our Reader. Part blog, part magazine, part scrapbook, Tourist makes the most of its digital platform to create a totally immersive digital experience...
Sanna Berger is the curator and editor of TOURIST Magazine, new to our Reader. Part blog, part magazine, part scrapbook, TOURIST makes the most of its digital platform to create a totally immersive experience. Originally from Sweden and now residing in Manchester, England, from where she edits TOURIST, we speak to Sanna about her latest hard-to-define online publishing project.
Tourist magazine is an interesting lo-fi magazine concept. Could you explain it?
I wouldn't say it is lo-fi, I would say that it is a concept that doesn't allow an inferiority complex to push it into directions we don't want it to take. I like the connotations that lo-fi implies, so you are welcome to call it that, but because something isn't glossy and doesn't tell stories of the successful, via thousand pound equipment and lighting doesn't make it lo-fi. We choose to keep it close to the things we love, which are simple.
As a concept it was thought of as a platform for just that, the artists who are otherwise ignored because of their gritty imagery working outside the boundaries of what will sell copies of a magazine or make money. A place for our ambitious friends to hang out and play. A place where it doesn't matter who you know, but what you do.
You use a lot of found images, as well as original photography, which guide the user around the site as opposed to clearly signposted labels, giving the user a very different experience to one they might get on other blogs and magazine websites. What is your thinking behind this?
It doesn't matter whether an image is found but has never been used elsewhere, or is produced especially for us. What decides the content of the magazine is quality and concept. The idea is to feature anything that provokes a thought process you may not be lead down in commercial publications.
The idea behind the design of TOURIST came from the name. As a tourist you become slightly disorientated by the sensory overload, and the focus lies not with an urge to label but to follow whatever pleases you and see where you end up. Unlike a dodgy alleyway down a side street in an unknown town, you will always stay within the borders of the main page and so you can lose yourself but not completely.
I mean for TOURIST to remain an ever-evolving platform, and so every issue changes throughout and even the main design differs so that we don't stagnate or start to take ourselves too seriously.
Tourist isn’t your first foray into online publishing – The Vagabond Set was the blog that brought you to the attention of a lot of people. Could you explain that?
I can't explain the attention. The Vagabond Set was a project that I started when moving to Tokyo to hustle a living there, working as a freelance photographer. It started as more or less an advert for my work and ended as a travel journal of my Japanese experiences. As I travelled back to Sweden, later living in London, Berlin, Manchester, and travelling through Europe several times, I kept it as a journal documenting my life. Slowly it evolved, (although some say regressed) into a medium for various works of mine alongside found imagery as I felt less and less inclined to share my personal life with such a sizable audience.
You also use a lot of your own collage art, which is interesting in that it often starts from pages of other print magazines. Could you explain the significance of this?
There is no real significance. In the first issue of TOURIST magazine we had an article discussing the subject of the remix culture – called RE-THINKING STEALING — TAKING IS THE NEW CREATING. I started making collages as a child and loved painting on the faces of girls in magazines. I still do that, put moustaches on the commercially pretty girl in the perfume ad on the back of a glossy magazine. I don't consider my collage-making much evolved since; as an adult we call it art but mainly it is just doodles and moustaches all over again. I think the act of using someone else's work as a base to create a piece of your own is perfectly fine as long as the original source is credited. Anyone wanting to remix culture up with any of my photographs is welcome to do so; in fact I would encourage it.
