JerseyStyle Photography

I’m a little late to this party, since the print edition of Rear Curtain has been out for a few months now – just over two to be exact. Somehow, though, the time from it’s 11/21/11 launch till now has just slipped away from me.

I think it was almost a year ago now that Ray Ketcham sent me an email about the new photojournalism website he, Matthew Connors and Sabrina Henry were starting.

What he wrote to me then was Rear Curtain is for stories and photo essays that show that folks in the west are living and breathing the same problems along with those in far off places. Less emphasis on religion and more on the common everyday problems that we all share. Breaking stereotypes by showing how we all live an everyday life, both the good and the bad.

I found this to be a very intriguing and exciting pitch, and immediately came up with three or four stories that I hoped to work on, shoot and contribute over the coming months

Fast forward a few months…and I turned in ONE story.

Yep, just one. Oh well, better than nothing.

But my lack of storytelling notwithstanding, the Rear Curtain site has been producing some fantastic pieces of photojournalism from photographers all over the world.

Then…gast forward a few more months after that and Ray, Matthew and Sabrina tackled an even bigger animal. When everyone is crying about the death of newspapers and magazines, they decide to do a print version of Rear Curtain. See, they had always expected to produce a print version of the site. It’s in their DNA. Photojournalism isn’t mean to live on the web. It’s meant to live on the printed page. And for thatvision, I commend them.

Why? Because there is something about photography and photo stories that begs to be put into print and savored over a cup of coffee, tea (or perhaps something stronger). We all shoot so much digital now, and post to websites, it’s almost an EVENT to make a print of one of your photos, let alone print a photo magazine.

See, tt’s easy to get lost in the flashing pixels of the web and its videos and slideshows; loading and attaching, and hitting send. But it really still means something to hold that finished product in your hands, to read the words and to examine the frames.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy working on my company’s annual report. Because I know that, a bit further down the road, I’ll smell the ink and hear the whirr of the Heidelberg print presses running. And then I’ll get to hold it in my hands.

Same thing with Rear Curtain. The stories on the website are fantastic and the photography is stunning.

But to sit and read these stories, and really look at them, and examine how the photographers made their frames,… that is really special.

What I really love about what the Rear Curtain team is doing is taking the bull by the horns and getting their work/our work out there. There are tons of photo sharing sites, and hundreds of photo contests (Just pay us $50 to maybehopefullypossibly select your photo to win. No refunds!), out there, so many so your head can spin. But most don’t have the form and intent that Rear Curtain does. And that’s what’s refreshing.

To me, what Ray, Matthew and Sabrina are doing with Rear Curtain is a harken back to the self-publishing times of the ’50s and ’60s. I can see someone like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg stepping up and contributing to this, just because they’d know that the end user appreciate what they did.

Now, to be fully transparent, another reason I really love Rear Curtain, Issue 1 is because the team asked me to close the book with one of my noir images, and a short story. We’ve talked about me contributing noir images over the next few issues, building each photo and story on the last. Like the pulp fiction serials of old.

Rear Curtain, Issue 1 features a whole host of great writing and photography from a number of talented people. And at $17.95 a print issue (or $4.95 for the digital version) it’s a steal.

You can order it here from Magcloud.

Go grab it. You won’t be disappointed.

Photojournalism isn’t dead. It’s still right there…behind the rear curtain.

© Mark V. Krajnak 2012 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved