Rara Avis

© Guillermo Labarca

Juvenal used to say that extravagant or strange people were “rara avis”, Horacio also referred to black swans as “rara avis”. We, the editors of this magazine, also feel like this, like extravagant beings who have kept on publishing this magazine to the 30th issue (this one is number 29... but there was also a number 0), 4 issues per year which gives a good number of years. Rara avis, because we do it for the love of art, an expression that sounds a bit ridiculous in today´s world. It means that we do not charge for it, anyone can read it whenever he or she wishes, with no need to spend anything other than time. The photographers who publish in this magazine are also rara avis because they don´t charge anything either, they also work for the love of art. Some of them are professional photographers in the sense that they live from their photography, but they reserve some time to be able to collaborate with publications like this one, even while they are highly reputed and well positioned in the market. Others do not live from their photography but for it, and offer the best of their creations to this magazine. It is to them and to the readers who follow us – be they photographers or not – and who know to appreciate creative photography that we dedicate this issue. /p>

This is a special number, not to celebrate an anniversary but to celebrate those who have published in this magazine. It has a different format than the usual one: in this number we aren´t publishing four authors with their work, but one photo of each one of the authors that have wanted to publish during the years of the magazine´s existence. We would like to know how these authors have evolved, we have known about many of them, we follow them in other publications, of others we have unfortunately lost track. With this number we remember and in a way, retrieve them.

When I told Justo Mellado (for those who don´t know him: curator and art critic) about this number he told me that giving, donating something – which is what we editors and authors do here – is a renunciation; for one, giving up royalties. It is also a form of wastefulness as opposed to saving, to keep for oneself, to treasure with the aim of capitalizing or to use in the future. It is simply to give away for free, something that is so absent in contemporary culture, where many of the presents that are given have to be considered to be part of some suspicious maneouvres to obtain something.

With this magazine, besides showing creative photography, we the editors, authors and readers are showing that it is possible to build ways of relating that seek no more retribution than the pleasure of communicating what matters to us.