Fotograf Magazine

In September the first issue of the Czechoslovak edition of Vice magazine hit the newsstands. Although it operates as an underground effort, it is a global project with clear business potential. But it probably won’t be easy to attract backward Czech advertisers to such a magazine. However, it will definitely find its set of readers and admirers. It’s cult and it’s free.

Young people need culture and today it’s best to remix it – make it both global and timeless (looking toward both the past and the future). All that vintage, hipster and punk mess surrounding it. Vice is both exemplary and detested. Many media that are corrupt bullhorns of lies and dirt, write about it as a dead-end street of Western Capitalism. But at the same time it’s almost found its way into school lesson plans and CNN and MTV realise that when they don’t grab onto (this trend) they will soon be lost.

To what extent does Vice address conspiratorial revelations? To me it seems that it is concerned mainly with mannerism and bizarre topics. It this combination of dirt and intimacy the breath of humanism, is there humility therein? Or is it just a voyeuresque business gimmick for young people suffering identity  crises?

Vice is about the world and the times we live in. We show how people behave. We zoom in on corners of the world and stories of the human spirit and body without packaging, without shame, trousers down and in the context of the politeness and vocabulary that the given topic deserves.  That  someone  would  compare  Vice  to  atheists  is  just a reflection of this world’s absurdity. A world that likes to sweep things under the carpet and let conservatism rot into authoritarian dimensions.