LONDON — Grace Wales Bonner has edited the latest edition of A Magazine Curated By. Titled “Rhapsody in the Street,” the 22nd edition of the magazine is meant to be an “academic and visual survey” of Wales Bonner’s interests and research across 200 pages.
The issue showcases the tradition of Black poetry, literature and portrait photography of the 20th century, and features a curation of archival portfolios and other historical ephemera, as well as newly commissioned essays, poems, paintings and portraits.
New work includes visual portfolios photographed in Los Angeles, London, Miami, Paris and New York, with Black portraiture central to each. One highlight is a series of self-portraits by the Paris-based Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, wearing archival designs by Wales Bonner.
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The work has been done in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and the images are included in Fosso’s first retrospective exhibition in France. They also appear as limited-edition prints inserted inside each copy of the issue.
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Conversations on the tradition of the Jamaican dancehall (a theme of one of Wales Bonner’s recent shows); the Kamoinge photographic group in Harlem, N.Y., and archives of unseen Ghanaian film photography sit alongside paintings and poetry by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, John Goto’s Lovers’ Rock series and new poems by Roger Robinson.
In an interview over email Wales Bonner, who won the LVMH Prize in 2016, said editing the issue gave her an “opportunity to connect and reconnect with people who have really inspired my practice. In that way, it feels like an ongoing conversation. For [us], this moment is really important; it’s framed the development of the brand over the last few years, and added further depth and insight to our work.”
The aim, she said, was for people to feel “a kind of continuation of history and the contextualization of [the brand’s] work, but also how interconnected and interwoven the community and stories feel.”
Wales Bonner described the issue as a “deep dive into a world in which we relate to and continue to sit beside. I wanted to look further into the artists and their art, reflecting on looking at style through street photography.”
She confessed that editing a magazine, while rewarding, was hard work.
“This was a considerable undertaking,” the designer said. “I think I may have underestimated the amount of work. It reminded me of the exhibition I did at the Serpentine and so many new strands of thought and development came from that experience. Similarly, with this, I’m excited about where these connections will lead in future.”
Guest editors of the Belgium-based A Magazine Curated By have included Alessandro Michele, Delfina Delettrez, Kim Jones, Lucie and Luke Meier and Yohji Yamamoto.