Monday, 7:00am
27 May 2013

Noted #53

A magazine for Bob Newman; ‘Image Duplicator’; Erwin Blumenfeld at Somerset House; and Rémi Noël’s ‘This is not a map’

When French art director / photographer Rémi Noël goes to the States, he uses road maps rather than relying on a GPS device. And he prefers silver film to digital photography.

‘I don’t have anything against digital,’ says Noël, ‘but I learned photography with film and it is the way I like to do it.’

Top and right: Texas by Rémi Noël, ‘This is not a map’, 2013.

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Noël’s new project, ‘This is not a map,’ presents photography in the form of a folded ‘map’. He has invited several other photographers to make similar map-like compilations of photographs. He says: ‘The photographers I know want to see their pictures in a book, not in a map … But when they see my Texas map they want to make a map.’

Forthcoming editions include Scotland by Marc Gouby, Baltimore by Ronan Guillou and Japan by So Me. More details at This is not a map.

Much-loved ‘magaholic’ Bob Newman. Photograph by Glenn Glasser.

Bob Newman portrait

Jeremy Leslie is collating written and visual contributions from ‘magaholics’ into a one-off publication with the working title My Favourite Magazine in aid of Bob Newman (who suffered severe head trauma last March, and is happily now recovering) and his family. See ‘Help us make “My Favourite Magazine”’ on the MagCulture blog. You can read Jeremy’s Reputations interview with Chris Dixon (Vanity Fair, New York, Adbusters) in Eye 85.

Photograph by Erwin Blumenfeld.

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An exhibition of Erwin Blumenfeld’s photography opened at Somerset House, ‘Blumenfled Studio: New York, 1941–1960’, 23 May > 1 September 2013. Known for his striking US Vogue covers, Blumenfeld was also regularly commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Life Magazine and shot such famous faces as Jean Patchett and Grace Kelly.

The ‘Image Duplicator’ exhibition, until 31 May 2013 at Orbital Comics raises questions about the appropriation of original comic book illustrations by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, whose controversial Tate retrospective comes to an end today (Monday 27 May 2013).

Whaat by Dave Gibbons, 2013.

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Dave Gibbon’s Whaat summarises the issue nicely, while paying tribute to the great Irv Novick. (Look hard at the Benday dots.)

Read Paul Gravett’s article ‘The Principality of Lichtenstein:
From Whaam! to Whaat?
’ on paulgravett.com and Rian Hughes’s article ‘Meanwhile in the weird world of art’ in Eye 39.

Four dates for your diary if you’re in the London area:
Nicer Tuesdays (28 May) includes John and Simon from Eye magazine talking about collaboration.
Printout, also on Tuesday, just down the road at the Book Club in Shoreditch, is about food magazines.
Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy of Unit Editions will talk about their blooming publishing empire for the Typographic Circle on Thursday.

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions, back issues and single copies of the latest issue. You can see what Eye 85 looks like at Eye before You Buy on Vimeo.