Reuben Wu is a British photographer, director and music producer. He’s also the co-founder of the group Ladytron.

Somewhere between 1970s concept album art, expeditionary imagery, and Surrealist painting is where Reuben Wu’s photographs steadfastly sit. His are pictures made in the real world, however, through collapsing time and merging processes, the real is transformed into the surreal, evoking a response simultaneously familiar and foreign. The photographs amplify the strangeness of place and speak to Wu’s individual experience within it.

The remnants of his processes – chemicals dragged arduously across the sensitised paper surface, infrared film shifting the world’s natural hues, light leaking into the camera and hitting the film plane – leave traces of their varied journeys embedded in the final image. Wu’s physical journey is a similar one; he treks with cameras in tow to places that, for most of us, are left to those who fall into the category of “explorer”. Considering the lengths he travels to make his photographs, the unpredictability of Wu’s materials is not exactly what we’d deem trustworthy. The resultant images delineate from the expected photographic trajectory and provide a mode of looking that is equally experiential and aesthetically unique. N.W.

Illustrator Michał Mozolewski

The “realist” polishes his lenses to capture the fleeting aspects of the external world. He prides himself upon the soundness and the sanity of his vision. The totality of that objective world he never doubts.
But there are others: they cultivate the inner vision, abandon the paved highway of standardized points of view, brave the quicksands of non-conformity, and seek their own path through the jungle of subjectivity.

For artists of this type, no less than seers and poets, the external world provides no more than the symbols and alphabet of communication, and the “field” into which they may project their visions.

A.B. and M.D.

Speak we’re listening. Director Salomon Ligthelm with outstanding voice over by Rob Ricotta.

The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral one.

F.N.

2014 font Fort Condensed by Village.

Jeremy Mickel: “I first ‘completed’ the new widths of Fort for AFAR magazine, but rethought the range of widths shortly after. I decided my Condensed wasn’t narrow enough to really differentiate from the regular width. I also redrew many of the characters, realizing that as a font gets more condensed, open forms like the C G S need to close up more, otherwise feeling too open. I cut the middle width and create a much narrower version and named that ‘XCondensed’.

AFAR wanted italics for all the styles, and I debated whether to draw italics for the new XCondensed weight. Almost on a dare from a type-designer friend, I knuckled through it and drew the italics for all the widths. It would have felt unbalanced not to, and in the end, I’m glad I made them. I think narrow italics can be useful, and are a worthwhile addition to an underserved part of the typographic spectrum.”

Almost a year has passed since Gone release by Skeleton Hands and it is steady in my music rotation.

Skeleton Hands have finally realized a debut album and the result is a dramatic, dark, and beautiful full-length. Gone is goth-tinged and synth-driven while focusing on a deep and lush melody. The duo manages to delve into a fresh sound that delights in the 707 and the dance floor, as well as the amplifier and the grit. Sometimes washed out and other times pristine and beautiful, Gone manages to fill a gap between nostalgia and the future.

Photographer Agatha A. Nitecka

_ i work quietly:
1. taking pictures in some far away lands. i come back and print my own newspaper series.
2. traveling on trains for days. i usually go to cities covered with snow.
4. sitting in the rain on film sets in remote locations. i’m happily represented by united agents.
3. wandering the yorkshire moors. a website dedicated to my film work is here: film.agathaa.com
5. when i’m not on a set or on a train i take portraits.
6. i’m now london based again, after having lived and worked in paris, france and st petersburg, russia.