CLASSIC #03

“A varied bunch of stuff in here.” Photos Discovery, Pavilion Wagram, Paris 9 November 2019. He grabbed a copy of issue 2 of The Classic from a stack, quickly flicked through it, stuck it under his arm and walked away. I haven’t seen him before or since. Was it a criticism? I don’t know. I decided to take it as a compliment. Our magazine is, as they say, a broad church, covering just about anything photographic up until 1980. In issue 2 we had everything from a press print of Clyde Barrow’s death car to masterpieces by Charles Nègre and Edward Steichen.

Diehards of particular periods and genres will inevitably find some interviews and articles in The Classic more interesting than others but one piece in issue 2 resonated right across the board: the interview with Philippe Garner. For some it was a history lesson, for others a reminder of when and how they themselves entered the market. The panorama Garner took from the podium on the 21st of March on the morning of the second Jammes auction in Paris became a particular talking point.

In this issue we publish another panorama, from the ill-fated Andrée Polar Expedition 1897. Tyrone Martinsson discovered it in the early 2000s when he went to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ storage facility to go through Nils Strindberg’s negatives. The panorama had never been printed before and a crop of the central image graces the cover this time.

Elsewhere in this issue, Jim Ganz, Senior Curator of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, quotes a piece of advice he was given by George Shackelford: “Your first acquisition should be made in storage”. Ganz made numerous finds in storage for Unseen, his first exhibition at the Getty.

The Classic proved to be a great success at Paris Photo. Despite us sending a veritable mountain of boxes of magazines, they were all gone by 14.00 on the Friday. I was asked by quite a few people at the fair about the business model, “It’s beautiful, it’s free, how do you make it work?” Well, despite growing advertising revenue it doesn’t break even. The easiest way to support The Classic is to take a subscription. It would be much appreciated. In case you missed issues 1 and 2 you can download them for free from our website.