FOTO Magazine



Flowers, children, pugs, beetles, swans, sunsets, clowns and mimes… Common content of the majority of photographic magazines. The FOTO magazine is a pure effort to steer away from this type of photographic diarrhea. And it goes pretty well even in spite of massive drag down coming from the publisher’s side. It started with an intention of making a full quality photography magazine, which would balance between the necessary dose of commercial dimension and the world of artistic photography in all shapes and forms. No shallow megapixel hunts, jerking huge lenses and squeezing designer bags with three hundred pockets…

FOTO is a platform for various photographic topics, it contains extensive and quality interviews with premier Czech photographers, young artist as well as established professional portfolios, extensive commentaries on important photographic exhibitions and competitions. When FOTO talks about gear, it always does with an honest opinion that does not always conform with the PR department of the manufacturing company. What else counts?

The magazine had published photographs from personas such are Koudelka, Drtikol, Erwitt, LaChapelle, Lange, Weston and many other globally respected authors. Other myriad of photographic veterans like Kratochvíl, Höpker, Štreit, Kyndrová, Cooper talked through hundreds of pages of interviews…

Empty studio after my school closed down, couch in the kitchen and 13” Mac were the first proto-offices where the initial layout was being born. The first issue with 10K print run was taking shape in a tiny bedroom somewhere in Southern Moravia because our photo editor could not leave his kids home alone. The following stages were raced by lonely tandem of me and editor-in-chief Tomáš Hliva. We battled one high-pitched deadline after another. Through late nights, inside the torso of once famous communist typography building. FOTO matured and gained on popularity with every new issue.

At the end of the journey, those had been two years of detailed work. Every single page from the first to the nineteenth issue passed through my hands with the melody of countless mouseclicks. I had the chance to get my hands on myriad of superb photographs from myriad of superb photographers. Few of my photographs got printed there too, as well as couple articles that I wrote, sent them to myself and typesetted them.