Essays
Pull up a chair and stay a while.
These are not interviews or conversations. Some subjects need room to breathe, to wander, to connect a lost record in Phnom Penh to a club in Lusaka to a kinetic light box in Paris. Something special to share and a thought or idea. This is a collection of those experiences and inspirations.
Featured Archival Essay
Fashion · Legacy · 2013
Franca Sozzani's 25 Years of Vogue Italia
On legacy, dissent, and the magazine that refused to be comfortable. A personal essay on Steven Meisel and the years fashion photography was used as cultural commentary.
Read the essay ↗What makes these different
01
Access, not access journalism
Not from a press kit. From relationships, travels, and curiosity built over decades.
02
The margins, taken seriously
Underground scenes, lost genres, artists working far from the centre of the market.
03
Connection over coverage
An essay links a sound to a city, a person to a movement, a scene to why it still resonates.
04
Twenty years of attention
Not a new platform chasing relevance. A two-decade archive of sustained, genuine curiosity.
All Essays
21 pieces
A Todd Oldham Cover Shoot for Hotel Venus
How a fashion obsession, a detour into finance, and Patricia Field's magazine converged into one afternoon.
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The Fantastical World of Pierre et Gilles
On the French duo's hand-painted photography and why their work refuses to age.
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The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie
A personal essay on Damascus's flamboyant lingerie tradition, and the childhood memories it unlocked.
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Jean-Baptiste Mondino
The director who made photography move and proved the music video was always an art form.
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How Wendy James Paved the Way
A reassessment of the Transvision Vamp frontwoman as an unsung pioneer of female rebellion in pop.
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Music Videos That Rock
The music video as cultural revolution.
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Bliss, Wonder and Awe, with a Side of Baloney
On Jason Silva's live show and the question of whether performance philosophy offers insight or spectacle.
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Floria Sigismondi
The director who built her own visual universe before anyone was watching.
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Sharjah Art Foundation
On what happens when a government decides culture is infrastructure.
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We Intend to Cause Havoc: This Is Zamrock
Zambia's biggest 1970s rock band: their rise, collapse, and rediscovery after four decades of silence.
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Remembering Peter Lindbergh
What it means to photograph a woman without the lie.
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How Music Shapes Our Memories
Body and Soul NYC and the question of what a dancefloor actually does to you.
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Ghosts in the Groove
Cambodia's golden psych rock era, and how the Khmer Rouge nearly erased it entirely.
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The End of an Era: Remembering 18th Street Lounge
A farewell to the Washington D.C. venue that ran for 25 years and gave birth to Thievery Corporation.
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Mainstream Mindfulness
What happens when a practice built for silence gets packaged for everyone.
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In a Sweet Harmony
On sound, collaboration, and the things music does between people.
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Pics or It Didn't Happen
Fatima Malki on documentation, presence, and what we choose to record.
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The Most Interesting Book in the World
The Codex Seraphinianus: a 300-page visual encyclopedia of an imaginary world, written in an untranslatable language since 1981.
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Palestinian Artists in Exile (1975-1986)
Falastin is an initiative rooted in the pursuit of human dignity.
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Sam Bassett's Changing of the Guard
A collaboration at the Hotel Chelsea, and what happens when a building's mythology outlives the people who made it.
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Travel
Notes from twenty years of going somewhere to understand something else.
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