Print Mono Paper Issue 3 August 25, 2010 We like free magazines at Article. One of our current favourites is Mono, a free magazine with no words.

The idea behind Mono is to create ‘visual essays’ through sequences of images, with the current third issue presenting eighteen full page monochrome portraits selected by artist John Stezaker. Stezaker typically creates collages by chopping and reassembling film stills, scenic postcards, and shots of classic film stars; here the composition is built from similar images in their original, unchopped state. We sort-of think we recognise some of their faces, though we’re a few generations too youthful and ignorant to know who these are portraits of. But this doesn’t deduct from the fun that can be had with interpreting this paper.

The narrative begins with a suggestive wink from an in-costume fireman on the cover, a hint at the intrigue and the eye-play to come. Subsequently we have a 180-degree-rotated man in uniform, implying a twisted frame of mind, a bourgeois creep in a bowler hat setting his flirty eyes on us while ignoring his yearning lady, and another passer-by with a prop checking out a wary nurse and making his uglier other half envious, before we cut away to a doctor preparing to inject a vulnerable-but-content naked man on the opposite page. Something goes wrong, doctor number two calls the mistress but she’s not bothered, though the wife in the pearls is pissed off and makes a dodgy deal with a detective for revenge. Suspension builds, she wakes her girl friend up with a phone call to bitch about it all. To conclude we have twin images of a lip-glossed and slick-haired debonair, who seems to have some narratorial confidence as he gazes reassuringly into our eyes as if to say that whatever mess these preceding faces are in can be left in his capable preened hands to sort out for a small fee.

So from all this it may be construed that this essay is a comment upon the corrupt state of the professional classes and the institution of marriage. Or something.

Whatever it ‘means,’ this paper is worth a few flick throughs. The cross-page and over-leaf interaction, particularly in the series of phone conversations between portraits, is carefully arranged so as to stir our curiosity. Everything here is said with a look, and at times this creates the sense of being both voyeur and object of the gaze of these portraitures.

Issue 3 of the Mono Paper is out now. 3000 copies, free. We picked ours up at the Site Gallery. A complete distro list can be found here.