THE MANIPULATOR MAGAZINE

THE MANIPULATOR was born in 1984 into a world of analog photography, almost unimaginable today: no cellphones, no internet, no Photoshop, no digital cameras. In those quondam times, it was the cordless phone, the fax machine, the colour-copier and the Apple IIc that defined the technologically-savvy.

These were the golden years of independent publishing. The once-rigid separation between commercial and fine-art photography was fast collapsing and some of the most exciting, new work began appearing, not on gallery walls, but in magazine editorials and advertising campaigns. With the drama of photographic aesthetics being played out on so egalitarian a stage, everyone was soon spectator, analyst, arbitrator and fan.

THE MANIPULATOR was a champion for photography. The Over-large format had been used on occasions in the past, particularly for picture-heavy publications, but this was the biggest by far (50 cm x 70cm), able to reprint images in gargantuan, poster-like proportions. Its content reflected an obvious bias towards architecture, design, art and photography, but it was also one of the first consumer magazines to start addressing the looming ecological plight facing the world. De-forestation; rising sea-levels; suspect animal-husbandry; acid-rain: these were issues regularly confronted in the pages of The Manipulator, made all the more compelling by the huge pictures that accompanied the articles.

Archival photography was another favourite. Hand-tinted images taken in Japanese brothels in the late-1800s; sepia-toned shots of Spanish bull-fighters from the turn of the century; murky photographs from the albums of the Victorian Egyptologists: all found a home in the pages of THE MANIPULATOR. When the USSR began crumbling under the onslaught of Gorbachev’s glasnost, the Novosti archives, which had been closed to the world since the revolution of 1917, were made available for reproduction in a 1989-edition of the magazine.

The romance between THE MANIPULATOR and photography would span a full decade. Over the ensuing years, from time to time, ghosts of The Manipulator have been spotted here and there. Naturally, other extra-large format clones followed, but they didn’t hang around for too long. The odd back-issue of THE MANIPULATOR would pop up as part of the set-dressing on a movie, or grace a pop-star’s album cover, or be a prop in some music video, or a feature in some exhibit. Even Helmut Newton admitted to its influence when he published his giant book SUMO.

Publishers Wilhelm Moser and David Colby shut things down in 1994 when the U.S. editor, Johno du Plessis, took the decision to return to his native South Africa – better to end it while the magazine was still cherished and esteemed.  To date, they have revived it just once, in collaboration with the photographer Bruce Weber and Babelsberg Film Studios, for a special Berlin issue.

So THE MANIPULATOR is currently asleep, but it just might be about to stir once more; together with Giannino Malossi, the magazine’s archivist and former Italian editor, there are plans afoot to mount an exhibition of the magazine and its archive and to take it on tour.

THE MANIPULATOR ARCHIVE

THE MANIPULATOR’s Archive of published and unpublished work is now located at Le Grand Moulin, in the village of Passavant-sur-Layon in Anjou, France.

Email: strabe44@aol.com