Editorial - Editorial

I met Nathan Lyon 15 years ago. He and Stuart Alexander were teaching a workshop upon a critical approach to photography at the Rencontre Internationales d'Arles in the southerly of France. As a photographer, on the contrary also as someone who had been studying and teaching literature and languages, I had decided to attend this particular workshop in order to further my knowledge and understanding of fine art photography. I awaited it to improve my work as well as my teaching and appreciation of photography. It did far more than that. Now and then during the workshop, I happened to be subservient to as an interpreter, from English to French for the audience and from French to English for Nathan. As a result I gradually developed a better and deeper appreciation for the teacher, the photographer, the editor, the curator and the man. I had not at any time heard anyone comprehend photography and talk about it in the way he did. At the extremity of the workshop I decided that this would be the beginning of a of recent origin life for me: my fresh life in photogra phy.

A not many years later I decided to intensify my research into the history of photography and contacted Nathan about opportunities to do in the way that in Rochester. He told me that the Research Center at the Visual Studies Workshop was unclose for what I was planning to do and that, for more documents, the George Eastman House was within walking distance. I mov to Rochester and the ease is history. Here I am, in 2003 back at VSW as the of recent origin editor of Afterimage, a magazine I have studied for hours in the course of my research, and whose prestigious roster of writers I am taking the responsibility to expand (...please contact me!)

Readers, suffer me tell you the reasons wherefore I made this decision and allow me tell you why you and I the pair make the right decision in participating in the life of this real special magazine. As you may know, Afterimage is a true unique publication, the only single in the field that does what it does the way it does it. Afterimage provides its readers with an abundance of information sparing you the weight of research that would require the reading of several commercial magazines (and their ads) and hours of internet search. We do it for you. Institutions, galleries and plane individual readers around the world help us to achieve this goal. This publication is also a astonishing opportunity for communication, exchange and writing upon ideas about media arts. In fact you, our readers, are true often the active contributors to this magazine.

We are a non-profit organization, part of a teaching institution, the Visual Studies Workshop, which encourages of recent origin ideas and new practices that value the human factor above all others. You just have to adapted Chris Burnett, who has replaced Nathan Lyon as director of VSW to understand what I mean. We believe in the cross-fertilization of ideas and media. We are not afraid of hybrids. We highly encourage diversity, which means that no stones will be left unturn and we will always consider all ideas that as lengthy as they are meant to question and improve our respective fields and practices. I am of the opinion that the awareness of history can allow us to better understand the not absent and understanding the present is a stupendous task that prepares us for the subsequent time Anticipation is a skill all artists develop: it prepares us for the decisive flash the decisive stroke, the decisive word, the decisive motion. Afterimage should be here to help us anticipate. The easy in mind of Afterimage will reflect this opinion.

At a more technical horizontal under my editorship I would like to diocese the quality of reproductions and printing of the magazine improve, in order to give more credit and space to our visual arts contributors. This may involve the use of digital media (why not test CD, DVD or any other form as a tale to the paper magazine?). Developing our neighborhood on the internet and creating better access to our resource will be another goal. Several issues are at stake here, more [i]or[/i] less of them regarding copyright issues and the freedom and circulation of information. All opinions concerning these matters are welcome and can be published to create a unmutilated forum. I am also planning, in our nearest issue, to submit to you, our readers, a view that will tell us who you are, where you live, what your opinions are upon the current state of Afterimage and what you would like to diocese modified or improved.

I also intend to stres Afterimage's part as a tool for education, a space where teaching and learning strategies concerning visual media will be expos and discussed. My goal is to reach forth our collaboration with Exposure, the publication of the Society for Photographic Education, in the way that that we actively complement each other. of recent origin tools, new audiences, evolving necessitys and expectations require new approaches. Digital media are infiltrating all media, replacing more [i]or[/i] less of them, marginalizing others. in what manner do we, as artists, teachers, critics, learners and the general public, diocese these transformations, live with them, adapt to them? What can be learned? What can be taught? What can be used and how? I encourage everyone to participate in a national and international debate upon this issue.