By: Jana Al Obeidyine, a dancer, writer and independent publisher based in Beirut- Lebanon.
A few weeks ago, I came across a delightful short story written by seasoned author and journalist Samir Atallah in Asharq Al-Awsat. In his piece, Atallah tells the story of Fatima, an orphan born in Tripoli, Lebanon, who grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, to become one of the most renowned performers of the Faggalah district in Cairo during the early 1920s. As a performer, Fatima’s stage name was Rose. Rose El Youssef, also known as ‘Sarah Bernard of the East,’ later became one of the most notable female magazine makers in the Arab region as well.
“Rose recounts in her memoirs, that she was at a café in one of the alleys off Emad El-Din Street, with her husband Zaki Tulaimat and some friends, talking about the inadequacy of art magazines, when the idea of publishing a high-end Art magazine was born. Zaki suggested “High Literature” as a name for the magazine. Others recommended “Hope” as a title. But Fatima decisively dismissed all the suggestions: Its name will be “Rose Al-Youssef,” she said. So Egypt can forget that she came from poverty and the popular Faggala neighborhood…” Atallah writes.
The eloquence of Atallah’s words made me wish I had a time-travel capsule, so I could go back in time to stand across the street from the table where this conversation took place, admiring the scene with all my senses. Or perhaps, sit at a nearby chair to eavesdrop on the conversation that led El Youssef to the life-changing decision of making a magazine.
As intended, the launch of Rose El Youssef magazine changed the art press scene of its time. Smart, serious, and wit, the magazine started as a cultural and literary magazine that soon bordered on the political.
Whether they offer political, social, educational, or entertaining content, magazines are considered media outlets, but in fact, they are and always have been creative outlets too. El Youssef was a creative individual who saw an unpleasant status quo and took action to change it. She created a dynamic and provocative artifact that distilled the hegemony of narrative surrounding the art scene at the time.
Interestingly, Rose El Youssef is not the first female magazine maker in the Arab region. Hind Nawfal, also born in Tripoli, Lebanon, published Al Fatat magazine in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1892. Al Fatat magazine is considered the first feminist magazine in the region. Through letters, the publication created a space to discuss the role of women in society with its readers and gave women a spotlight to shine in print. No one can deny that Al Fatat magazine was an avant-garde magazine and an Arabic pioneer of a genre. That is to say that since their early days, magazines have been subversive playgrounds.
Printed magazines are troublemakers. They are often born to disturb a convention, open a window into a new perspective, or pave the way to a new movement.
It was thought that with the rise of the digital age, and its endless possibilities, that print would be dead. Yet, printed magazines defied this prediction by transforming instead. They refurbished their model to ride the wave of the global digital age gracefully.
The main reason behind the survival of printed magazines is that the readers never really gave up on them. Unlike news articles, the content of a magazine is curated to be savored rather than consumed in a rush. Moreover, having an actual, tangible object in our hands is an intimate experience that is hard to substitute with the coldness of tablets and phones.
The digital age also brought to the forefront graphic design as an art form, previously undermined in the craft of magazine making. Cover design, illustrations, and the visual identity of a magazine were always central determinants in the success of a magazine, but content used to take precedence. The proliferation of content offered by digital media brought forward the relevance of the art of design and the craft of printing. So, like filmmaking, magazine making became a full-fledged production, where every little detail contributes equally to the project’s success.
The value of magazines lies in the fact that they are simultaneously progressive, forward-driven artifacts that capture and preserve time. “L’air du temps” is a French expression that I particularly cherish. It translates roughly to “the spirit of the time.” I always thought it means the essence of the overall era amassed collectively at a particular time in history. For instance, reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we get to sense what it feels like to live in Prague in 1968. In literature, “the spirit of the time” is captured through the eyes of individual authors. Magazines capture “the spirit of a time” through the eyes of a collective of writers and artists. And because magazines are periodicals that live for years, in retrospect one can also observe through their evolvement the transformations a culture undergoes over time.
Magazine making is an art above all else, but it is also a business. The business of magazine making is as tough as any other art form, with the particular challenge of not being fully recognized as an art form or news outlet. As a result, art institutions or journalism grants seldom back them financially. And since the ads model, which sustained magazines for decades in the pre-digital era had become obsolete, today magazine-makers rely almost exclusively on their readers for financial sustainability.
The new business model consists of treating every printed issue as a standalone artifact, like art books. To highlight the standalone aspect, independent magazines often curate their editions under a specific theme, creating a thread that binds an edition within the overall series.
Independent periodicals are also no longer bound by a strict printing schedule. Since independent publishers rely primarily on their audience, the printing of a new issue depends on how well the previous issue has done in the market.
Surely, the new magazine publishing model is uncertain and freighting, but it has its perks. For one, artists realize their visions without constraints. Second, they enjoy the satisfaction of knowing directly how their audience is responding to their message. Third, in this global world, oversaturated with content, they get to create a micro-global community, where the rules are not dictated by powerful institutions, mass media, or the current trends in the contemporary art world.
The originality of their proposition remains intact; they remain genuinely true to themselves.
Since the early 2000s, Lebanon has experienced a rise in the new wave of magazine publishing. Arabic, English bilingual and tri-lingual titles started to be spotted on the shelves.
I highlight here three magazines out of many other impactful publications to illustrate how indie magazines are born and what kind of message and energy drives them.
The Outpost magazine is one of the first Arab magazines to adopt the new publishing model in Lebanon. It was born in 2012, when the Arab Spring was still spring and when the youth saw that the future holds endless promises of fresh beginnings. The magazine captured the hopefulness of a generation that dared to dream of a new vision of the Arab world that resembled them. Audacious and imaginative, The Outpost is an embodiment of a generation’s dreams. Seven years later, The Outpost decided to leave the printer. With grace and care, it digitized its archive to make it available online for free for future generations.
In 2017, Cold Cuts was born. While The Outpost is forward-looking, Cold Cuts magazine is rooted in the present Middle Eastern region that continues to deny queerness the right to exist. Courageous becomes a shy adjective describing a visual magazine exploring the queer culture in the Middle East. Surrounded by a social setting that is still hostile to sexual conversations, let alone queer talks, the magazine found its way into the printer with the strength of its publisher convictions.
A Dance Mag is the indie magazine I publish. In 2018, two years after The Outpost left the printer, I partnered with its publisher, Ibrahim Nehme, to give way to another new narrative that transcends geographical borders and belongings. A Dance Mag is a publication that reveres movement as a central and indispensable aspect of our existence. It is perhaps the first attempt ever at debunking the myth of human ‘rootedness,’ reclaiming motion as a primordial aspect of life. It also liberates “dance” from the performance label. It brings it back to the people by highlighting the remarkable role it plays in our everyday life.
Lebanon-based independent print magazines titles are numerous. Each one of them has a distinct voice and a unique message. Most of them provide a selection of their content for online readers on their websites. If you would like to explore the magazine publishing scene in Lebanon further, I will leave you with some additional titles:
Bidayat – An Arabic intellectual and cultural quarterly publication that aims to make a significant contribution in the on-going struggles of Arab societies towards self-determination, citizenship, democracy, secularism, social and economic justice.
The Carton – An English magazine that instigates conversations around food culture and the Middle East.
Samandal Comics – A trilingual magazine aiming to advance the art of comics in Lebanon.
Journal Safar – A bilingual, biannual magazine born to remedy the scarcity of critical writings on design in the global south.
Rusted Radishes – A print and online literary and art journal creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
Copyright Photos: Jana Al Obeidyine