Fotograf Magazine

Magazines published between the wars present a rewarding area for research. Tim Satterthwaite enters this field with humility and the knowledge that he is indebted to those who leafed through the century-old magazines before him. His new book, Modernist Magazines and the Social Ideal, which is based on his doctoral dissertation, is written with a knowledge of the existing literature and with a solid overview of the extensive field. He also emphasizes that it is not his ambition to compete with existing overview publications and that he is not aiming at an exhaustive perspective on the entire scene. Quite the opposite: his work arises from a detailed examination of two specific magazines and the changes they underwent over time. Despite this fact, he manages not to lose sight of the broader context. The story he tells can thus be read as a history of interwar modernism from Utopian visions to bitter disillusionment.