COLORS Magazine

If one of your New Year's resolutions consisted of expanding your horizons in the photo publications realm, you could turn to the canons for a jump start. National Geographic, Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and a variety of daily periodicals consistently provide a reliable mélange of top quality images. Yet, within the market today, a wide range of smaller publications showcasing novel and brilliant camera work deserve attention as well.

COLORS magazine, a venture initiated in 1991 by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani of the Benetton Group, is nicknamed “a magazine about the rest of the world.” Following this motto, COLORS publishes in 40 countries, in four languages, and in three editions. Its goal is to connect ideas globally through poignant images and words. Tibor Kalman, the designer who broke ground with his New York agency, M&Co., served as the original creative editor of COLORS. His design sensibility molded the bold and minimalist format of the magazine, using striking but unassuming images and short reportage to accentuate universal ideas. In more recent times the "idea firm" of FABRICA has migrated the magazine to the Web, transforming the COLORS Web site into a globally accessible piece of art.

The first four issues released in the early 1990s concentrate on birth, immigration, evolution and race — vast topics, but universally experienced and regionally defined. Issue #47, one of the most exceptional issues in the archives, is titled, "MADNESS." Stark portraits of individuals who found love in a Cuban mental hospital serve as an entry point. Eerie pictures of disturbed faces and desolate backdrops play into the magazine’s theme, yet cleverly break the stereotype of insanity by portraying happy lovers. The magazine continues on to Belgium, South Africa, the Los Angeles County Jail, as well as into the innards of medication; juxtaposing laconic one-line interviews with haunting and diverse images of madness.

The topic is almost always vague, but the stories and images are so personalized and so creatively portrayed, you will never think the same about themes such as frontiers, food, lust, slavery, status and monoculture ever again. The most recent issue is titled, “Back To Earth.” While most newsstand magazines feature airbrushed celebrities on their covers, Issue #69 chose Erwan Fichou’s portrait of a peasant sitting atop a donkey to grace its cover. A magazine combining this much unassuming creative power with such social awareness deserves to be your new years resolution.

 

Here is a peek at some of COLORS magazine's front and back covers:

 

 

 

 

Enjoy !

 

- Rachel