My God, this is going to be a disaster, said Roy Thomson, the owner of The Sunday Times back in 1962. He was talking about the launch of the very first colour magazine to be included with a newspaper a maverick step forward and gamble when newspapers were just that: papers full of news. Colour photographs? Who on earth would be interested in those?
The answer to that is a quarter of a million new readers - thanks to the peerless quality of its writing and photojournalism - leading to an explosion of glossies accompanying newspapers across the world. This year, the Sunday Times is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the launch of its colour magazine, and this is being marked by a free exhibition on the top floor of the Saatchi Gallery.
In honour of its 50 years, the cover of the anniversary edition magazine this weekend showed an installation of more than 100 magazines hanging on wires to form the number 50. The image was conceived and art directed by The Sunday Times Magazine's art director Alyson Waller, and created by CG specialist Taylor James.
She only had a week to come up with the idea: "Of course, the most important thing to get across is that it's 50 years old, an incredible amount of time for a magazine to run. It's a bit obvious, but having the number 50 was important. The editor then mentioned that we were going to do an exhibition to celebrate the 50th anniversary and that's when I started thinking about creating some kind of installation that could appear in a gallery. There wasn't enough time to create an actual installation so I approached Taylor James to see if they could create a virtual one."
So Waller worked tirelessly with Taylor James and their 3D artists to create an image which looked like a real installation rather than a scaled model. The result, below, is impressive, with each virtual magazine being threaded onto a wire. If you look closely enough you can even see the staples in the fold of the magazines!" says Waller.
Running from 31 January to 19 February, it’s a fascinating exhibition. The images are clever, original, powerful, moving, humorous, imaginative, shocking, immediate and iconic. All the things that great photography should be. Hardly surprising, in a way, when one considers that the work exhibited is that of the world’s very finest photographers: Don McCullin, David Bailey, Eve Arnold, Snowdon, Terry O'Neill, Richard Avedon, Eugene Richards, Stuart Franklin and Sam Taylor-Wood. It's well worth the trip to the Saatchi Gallery - even if you skip the rest of the 14 rooms and head straight to the top floor.
Running from 31 January to 19 February, it’s a fascinating exhibition. The images are clever, original, powerful, moving, humorous, imaginative, shocking, immediate and iconic. All the things that great photography should be. Hardly surprising, in a way, when one considers that the work exhibited is that of the world’s very finest photographers: Don McCullin, David Bailey, Eve Arnold, Snowdon, Terry O'Neill, Richard Avedon, Eugene Richards, Stuart Franklin and Sam Taylor-Wood. It's well worth the trip to the Saatchi Gallery - even if you skip the rest of the 14 rooms and head straight to the top floor.
by Ashley Morrison
Ashley is a blogger, copywriter and editor.
Follow me on Twitter @Ashley_Morrison
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www.creativepool.co.uk/ashleymorrison
