The Publics

Now that all the fanfare surrounding this article has all but died down, I think it’s apt to discuss one of the reasons why it was able to gain such a crazy amount of momentum – the cover. Of course I’m completely biased but I think this is one of the freshest images to hit the stands in recent memory. Designed by Brazilian graphic artist Pedro Inoue, the cover’s stark aesthetic instantly distinguishes it from the surrounding design-puke of your average magazine rack, while the portrait communicates an unnerving, but attractive blankness. The man responsible for this vision of the hipster-christ is German photographer Olaf Blecker, master portraitist and pioneer of the “raw” approach. He did a great interview with The F-Stop in which he states:

There is no general message. I work as an amplifier. Often I will not know much about the person I am shooting. I have a photographer friend who does a lot of research, but I think, ‘Why should I read anything?’ I have antennas. I feel it anyway. They just have to sit there. I think everybody has these antennas. In German you would say, menschdenken, which is the knowledge of man. Some people say I’m a little bit beastly. Not evil. I think evil is too much. Some people say I’m not nice to people. I don’t want to be nice. I was told that everyone was talking about who they would want to be photographed by at my agency in New York. One person instantly said, ‘Not by Olaf Blecker’. I think that’s quite funny. I don’t take it personally. Many people don’t like themselves in my images. I admit, I wouldn’t like to see myself like that. It’s not beautiful. I am good at making people more intense, but I’m not good into making them look beautiful. It’s not my goal to make people as beautiful as possible.

Some examples of his work after the jump…