In this video, I talk about something I really love—Katalog, a Danish photography journal that’s been independently published since 2015 under the stewardship of Jens Friis in Odense. Jens handles nearly everything himself—editing, commissioning, layout—and the result is a beautifully produced, themed journal usually released twice a year.
The issue I feature focuses on the theme “borders.” Although rooted in Denmark, its perspective is international—covering both contemporary and historical photography—with all text in both Danish and English. The print quality and layout are outstanding.
What makes Katalog special is the deeply personal , obsessive energy required to make it and the finbished article - always interesting and an aesthetic delight. It isn’t driven by commercial interests or committee agendas—just Jens’s passion for photography and visual storytelling. Supporting his work is meaningful because without it, an independent voice in photo publishing would be lost.
I encourage anyone interested in photography to explore Katalog, subscribe, and support this unique magazine.
Thanks,
Alex
Katalog – Journal of Photography & Video
https://www.katalog-journal.com
About Jens Friis
https://katalog-journal.com/news/
Brandts Museum (publisher)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandts_Museum_of_Photographic_Art
Ada Trillo (photographer, “La Caravana del Diablo” etc.)
https://www.adatrillo.com
https://www.gf.org/fellows/ada-trillo/
Matthew Finn (photographer, “School of Art”, “Mother”)
https://www.mattfinn.com
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/19/the-big-picture-a-reflection-of-family-life-matthew-finn
Diane Arbus (historical photographer featured in Katalog)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Arbus
TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone and welcome back to Psychophotographica.
I want to talk to you today about something that I really love.
It's a magazine called Catalogue and this is the latest edition of it.
It's published since 1989 in Denmark by its editor who founded it and continues to run it today, Jens Friis.
It is a... A photography... Well, you could say it's a lens-based catalogue of contemporary photography and historical photography, and every edition is thematised.
So this one is 36.1, which means it's the 36th year that it's in publication, and it's the first catalogue of this year, and there are only two a year, by the way. The theme is borders.
And given that it's Danish in origin, borders have quite a—they are heightened in importance for the Danes at the moment because of the question of Greenland and what America intends to do about that, which is kind of extraordinary and unthinkable.
It was established in 1989, it's based in Denmark, but it has an international reach and it's collected by or subscribed to by all the major institutions throughout the world.
So although it is Danish and it sometimes has a slant towards Danish photography or subject matter or photographers in the world, it is genuinely a global magazine and it pays attention to work from all over the world. It's not parochial in that sense. It's bilingual so let me just show you...
So this is a beautiful, I've got to say, a beautiful series by Carl Johan Eriksson. It's called The Fence, and you'll see that there's text here—now you won't be able to read that—but one side is in Danish and the other side is in English, and they're beautiful translations. It's not at all—I mean, I don't understand, I don't know how Jens manages to do this, because I don't know that there's anybody who works with him. But he, as far as I know, lays the whole thing out. He commissions everything.
And I don't know who does the translations, but it is beautifully done. It's really an exquisite publication.
And it's one of those gems that exist because one person wills it into being. And I find those projects really attractive and exciting because they're not being done because it's been decided that this is a good idea by a committee or by a foundation or a business. It's being done because one person feels compelled to do it.
And then you—think about it—36 years of this, that's really extraordinary. The effort—and it's really not run on advertising, it's run on its subscriptions, which I think at the moment are 48 euros if you're in the sort of Scandi sort of area, or 56 if you're anywhere else.
Which means that it's 28 euros a copy, an edition, so you get two a year.
Each of them are 96 pages, and they're this size. I mean, I'm not quite sure what the actual size is, but it's a sort of 5:4 format. It's a very pleasing format.
And I have been subscribing to it for some time, but... I don't think about the money. I mean, I do think about the money because it's not an insignificant amount.
But if you sign up to this, you're getting not only—every edition is just beautifully laid out and so on—I'm going to show you a few more bits and pieces in this one.
But you're supporting the work of somebody who, should they not be there—and this is how I sort of think about it—should they not be there, or not doing it, rather, the world would be a poorer place for it.
And that's why it's worth supporting Catalogue.
I can't put it more strongly, and if you're into photography, I think it's just a great thing to receive, and I'm always thrilled when I see it come through the door.
Okay, so just to talk about how Jens treats photography— I mean, for example, in this issue, it's a good example—we've got Ada Trillo, her piece called La Caravana del Diablo, which is about immigration, and it's just an appalling sort of scene, an appalling scenario for so many people.
But what you can see is that Jens has honoured taking great care, and I believe this is four-colour printing and that's important because it's really hard to print black and white in four colours unless he's printing duotone and then overprinting, because he's got red here—which means that either he had to print it duotone (meaning it was just black and white on two plates) and then run the pages through the press again to get the red heading here—or he's really done something masterful and quite magic with four-colour printing, which is cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and balancing cyan, magenta and yellow in order to get this quality of printing.
I'd love to know how he does it anyway because it really is something.
And as you can see, he lays everything out and gives everything a lot of space. Pictures are big, which I think is really useful. When they need to be big, he ratchets down the scale when he wants to make things more intimate.
And I think it's a work of art, really, what he does.
And sometimes he'll go full bleed— I mean, across the double-page spread, you know—it's... I mean, the printing, you won't be able to tell particularly from the screen here, but it is amazing.
I want to show you something which I was particularly impressed with, given how it's printed.
Okay, this is a spread. These are all from the latest issue, okay? So this is The Fence by Carl Johan Eriksson. And it's a series of landscapes. And I won't go into what they're about, but what I want to talk to you about is the printing.
Now... in every case, Jens on press—somehow Jens has managed to retain a really, really sympathetic balance between what is pure white in the image and the white of the paper in the margin.
And that relationship that you get between the heaviness of the pure white, featureless white—there's no information in here—and the page is one of the things which I always sort of notice, whether it's like darkroom printing or duotone printing or whatever kind of printing, it's one of those things that you kind of—my eye goes towards—and you can always tell if somebody really knows what they're doing when they're doing this.
So Catalogue is—I mean, you know—whoever's responsible, and it is Jens, basically—that is a mark of real attention to detail.
And he's—if you sign up to Catalogue, you deal with Jens directly. And if you're late paying for it, you get hassled by Jens directly for it.
So it's extraordinary that it runs. And I try doing things, and I find it incredibly anxiety-inducing from time to time. And I can't imagine how it is with him.
And look what we've been through—all the economic ups and downs—and it's still going. And it's completely uncommercial. So it's, you know, I think it's incredible.
Let me show you some other Catalogue editions that have come out sort of in the last few years.
These are pretty much all I've got since I started subscribing to it.
This one featured Anders Peterson quite heavily.
And that is thick, you know. I mean, each one has a huge amount going on in it.
There is occasional advertising—I'll show you here—if there isn't a big ad on the back, which there is here, which was... this was last year. So this is 2024, and that's Ukraine Diary by Boris Mikhailov. So that got a full-page ad on the back.
But if you don't get an ad on the back, you get a sort of a synopsis of back-up editions which you can order as well, and they're well worth it too.
I know they come up on eBay as well, but obviously if there's something that you're particularly interested in you can go and look at the website and there's an archive on the website—and I'll put that in the show notes as well.
And this—I think this might be the first one I ever received—33.1—when I started.
And the theme for this one was Eye to Eye.
Jens is reproducing original prints. This was a whole sequence on Diane Arbus.
He is reflecting the warmth of the originals, of the original prints from which these were made—and doing that in this kind of publication—that's truly historic.
So, you know, he's dealing with really beautiful work, really classic work sometimes, really contemporary work sometimes...
I wouldn't say so much that was abstract—it's usually from—here we go—John Aylinder, which is just—look how he's printed—I mean, look at that. I mean, I love these pictures anyway, but these are just beautiful. And this was from when the book came out from Dewi Lewis. It's absolutely lovely.
Let me just—and then I just want to show you, because this was how I came to know it—because Matthew Finn’s School of Art was published in here, and he gave it a really...
There's the essay, and I know these pictures well because I did the separations for them for the book, and I know exactly how hard people worked.
Greg at Stanley Barker and Matthew and I worked to balance these prints, and they are beautifully printed here—as well as you could ever hope for really.
So that's it really.
I hope that this inspires you to at least do a little bit of digging around. I'll put the notes down in the show notes and do take a look for yourself.
And you will have the joy of dealing with Jens himself when you decide to push the button and subscribe.
So thank you very much for watching this.
I know that my delivery is not always perfect, but in my head there are things I want to say and I just want to get them out onto this video and I'm getting better at it.
I'm trying to be more concise and I will get more concise, so thank you very much, and I hope that you continue to enjoy these Substack videos of mine that will come out—I think—two to three times a week, perhaps—sometimes longer, sometimes shorter.
And I look forward to engaging with you and please get in touch if I can be of any assistance to you or you want to have an argument with me or you want to put me right on something or you just want to raise something that I haven't noted in one of my videos and I should have done—I would be grateful for corrections of omissions and errors.
I'm open.
Okay, so thank you very much and see you soon.
Bye-bye.
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