Interview

It came from nowhere! Well, somewhere:
Fantom is the new quartlerly photography magazine based in Milan and New York, where editors Selva Barni and former Art Basel Director Cay Sophie Rabinowitz are respectively based. It's a publication dedicated to the voice of photographers "found, forgotten, and not yet discovered," says Barni. It's organized by franchised features, like "Eye to Eye," a conversation between photographers, and "Eye of the Beholder," in which an art professional trains a lens on the work of an artist. The cover of the not-for-sale Issue Zero introduces the work of Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou, whose work will feature in Issue One, out in November. Talk about product placement. There's also a spread devoted to the Purple Diary, Olivier Zahm's phenomenon of a brand-supplementing blog, featuring reproductions of the site's black-and-white, high-immediacy, high-gloss photos to take on the difference between screen and print. On the title of the magazine, Barni says, "Every picture is a phanto," reasoning that because of the popularity of digital photography and online archives like Flicker and Facebook, "photography itself has become a phantom."

We asked Barni to pick five photographers of paricular immediacy:

Lately I have been fascinated by ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS form the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those are tintypes, magic lanterns, daguerrotypes... when a photograph was a happening and had defined social roles. Some are standard images, like portraits of babies held by their mothers hidden under a dark cloth or incredible "post mortem" poses... they are mysterious and haunting. Not by chance, the collection we visited for our first issue is based on this variety of images; a beautiful selection owned by artist Linda Fregni Nagler.


I also really like Japanese photography from the 1950s onwards; one of my latest "discoveries" is ASAKO NARAHASHI, for her beautiful series "Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water."

(LEFT: ASAKO NARAHASHI, ZEZE, 2005. COURTESY OF YOSSI MILO GALLERY)






And then AUGUST SANDER, who always  satisfies my voyeuristic side, with details that reveal at the same time a person, an era, and a nation.

(AUGUST SANDER, FARMER FROM THE WESTERWALD, 1910. COURTESY THE GETTY)



















I like RICHARD BILLINGHAM's photographs: beautiful and poignant.

(RICHARD BILLINGHAM, UNTITLED, 1995)









And last, but absolutely not least, UGO MULAS and his most conceptual work.

(UGO MULAS, LUCIO FONTANA, 1964)