Elska magazine celebrates nine years of sharing diverse queer photography and stories.
“I’m incredibly grateful to have been around this long. I understand how rare it is for any artistic endeavour to be sustainable and have longevity, so I must give thanks to all the customers and participants over these nine years,” says Elska editor and chief photographer Liam Campbell.
This week Elska celebrates its nine year anniversary. Over this time the project has published forty-seven issues of its flagship indie print ‘bookazine’, each made in a different city and featuring photographs and stories of ordinary members of the local queer community.
Asked how the endeavour began, Liam confesses that it all started as an experiment.
“Back in 2015 I was working as a flight attendant and doing a side-hustle as a photographer, hoping to break into fashion,” he recalls. However, the more gigs Liam got, the more he became disheartened by the lack of dignity offered to the photographers, crew, and especially the models.
“As ridiculous as it may seem in hindsight, I didn’t appreciate that conventional notions of who is beautiful and who is worthy of our attention would be so narrow, and so painful to witness in reality,” he explains.
“So I started doing photoshoots of random people I met during my cabin crew layovers, just ordinary, usually queer men, and I found this to be much more fulfilling, especially since I placed no criteria on who I’d allow in front of my lens.”
Soon Liam had the idea to turn this habit into an indie magazine concept.
“So I booked a trip to Lviv, Ukraine, met some random local boys, photographed them, put a few stories together, and published everything into what would become the first issue of Elska.”
I’m incredibly grateful to have been around this long. I understand how rare it is for any artistic endeavour to be sustainable and have longevity.
That’s how the ball started rolling and as time went by and Elska developed Liam decided to make various tweaks.
“First, I had the idea to invite the men I photographed to write a story, just something true from their lives to help get to know them better.
I also started making a more concerted effort to promote diversity, which mainly was inspired by negative reactions from the public about the diversity I’d published so far.
I also started making a more concerted effort to promote diversity, which mainly was inspired by negative reactions from the public about the diversity I’d published so far.
For example, when we received complaints about subjects they deemed ‘too fat’ or ‘too old’ or ‘too fem’ or basically anything other than white; it only spurred me on, driven by a genuine belief that exposure can erode people’s ‘preferences’ and prejudices.”
The effort has obviously been successful, as can be seen by Elska’s roster, which so far includes issues made in cities on every continent of the world except Antarctica, including our very own Reykjavík (Iceland), Tbilisi (Georgia), Bogotá (Colombia), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Cape Town (South Africa), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Seoul (Korea), Casablanca (Morocco), Montréal (Québec), São Paulo (Brazil), and Almaty (Kazakhstan).
As we approach the milestone of a fiftieth issue, we will be making some major changes to the project.
Coming in September will be the forty-eighth issue, made in Melbourne, Australia.
When combined, a total of 775 different subjects have taken part in for Elska, each photographed on their city’s streets and in their homes, and each published with an accompanying story.
Liam says he’s very excited about the magazine’s future.
“As we approach the milestone of a fiftieth issue, we will be making some major changes to the project, and we have a very special location chosen for that first issue of the ‘new era’ of Elska.”
Not willing to share the details yet, we’ll just have to wait for the next issue to find out more!
Elska print mags are sold in select shops around the world and for order online. Also available are e-mags, signed art prints, annual subscriptions, postcard sets and more. A list of stockists and more information can be found on the Elska website, www.elskamagazine.com.
Main Photo, from the left: Anas A – Casablanca Morocco, Juanmanuel E B and Alonso R L – Madrid Spain, Yoon J – Seoul Korea and Heiko M – Berlin Germany.