Q&A: Lisa Naftolin chats with Scott Thode of VII The Magazine

In April of 2010 VII Photo launched the online publication, VII The Magazine , to present stories shot by the agency’s photographers. TPP contributor, Lisa Naftolin, checked in with the project’s editor, Scott Thode.

LN: You’ve been a photo editor on print magazines in the past, but this is something new. How are you finding the online experience?

ST: I’m absolutely loving it. Finding different ways of telling stories visually with this amazing group of photographers is a dream. We aren’t dealing in words with this magazine for the most part — though that’s coming — so the focus is always going to be on the visual, finding interesting ways of telling visual stories. It’s called a magazine but that’s a strange way to refer to this. It’s not a print magazine, it’s not like taking a magazine you’d find on the newsstand and putting it online. We are creating a new form of story telling and journalism and that’s what makes it fascinating for me.

Albanians by Joachim Ladefoged

Is there anything that exists online now that you might compare it to or that was an inspiration?

I’m not sure there is anything right now to compare it to. This is an experiment and we are creating it from scratch, making it up as we go.  I have to commend the VII photographers for having the guts and foresight to do this. As far as what inspires me, I think that comes directly from the material I am working with and the personalities of the individual photographers, including their and my own quirks.

One of the challenging aspects of putting out a magazine is determining it’s voice, knowing who it’s addressing. Can you comment on that aspect of creating VII?

I’m like a kid in a candy store! I really am. There are all of these wonderful stories and I ask myself, ‘what do I feel like doing today? I guess I edit to my personal taste to a certain degree, but I also do think a lot about keeping the content varied. If I do two heavy duty stories two weeks in a row, like Christopher Morris’s Black Tide or Ashley Gilbertson’s The Consequences of War, I may want to follow up the next week with something that’s a bit of fun, like Jessica Dimmock’s Paparazzi or Ziyah Gafic’s Tito’s Bunker. It is my hope that if you wander around the magazine there will be something that piques your interest.

Black Tide by Christopher Morris

I’m a person with a range of interests, a lot of different ways of seeing the world, as are the photographers at VII.  “Entertain me,” “Educate me,” “Do something,” that’s the kind of magazine I’m trying to make. I hope that as people come to this it will draw them in. One of the most exciting things for me is that despite the fact that we haven’t put this out there in a big way yet, the numbers tell us that people are spending 7-10 minutes on the site at a time which, in the internet world, is a long time. That means people are staying with the stories.

Paparazzi by Jessica Dimmock

One thing that makes this unique and truly different from a traditional magazine is that a magazine determines its course and then assigns stories, whereas this material is generated by the VII photographers who will create it with or without the magazine, and then it passes through your editorial funnel, which is a compelling difference.

It is unique in terms of what’s happening in the business because with VII The Magazine the power lies with the photographers. It used to lie in the hands of people who were buying, the print magazines and newspapers. We have the material and that’s where our strength is. We’re not sitting back waiting for people to buy it, we’re putting it out there ourselves.

What state are stories in when they come to you?

Every state! With a lot of the stuff I’ll start from scratch. I’ll see something on the VII site and start a conversation, or they’ll send me something… I was working on a Car story by Christopher Morris the other day I was a bit hesitant because the shots were a little old so I emailed him and said “Do you have any more cars?” He said he’d been shooting them for years and had just shot more the previous day. Then he said, “I also have this video I made when I was down in the Gulf.” It was just about done. He sent me the piece and with a few edits we were able to get it up right away. It’s a 9 1/2 minute video, not something that a lot people would put up on their site, but I said “let’s just do it.” It’s gotten a lot of response from people. The great thing about what we’re doing is that we can do what we want.

Some of the longer pieces are really evocative – the viewer is transported somewhere, seeing what’s taking place, feeling something, hopefully wanting to know more…

I want people to have an emotional response to these stories. I’ve deliberately kept the pieces very straightforward, very sophisticated. I try to never lose sight of the fact that the imagery, whether it’s still photos or videos, must always come first. I guess the ultimate goal from my point of view is to let the individual voices and vision of the VII photographers ring out in a new and exciting way.

Haiti by VII; James Nachtwey

Moscow Nights by Antonin Kratochvil

How is word of this site getting out?

Right now you get to it through word of mouth, via Lens Culture or VII or the Herald Scotland. We want to be very careful not to grow it too fast. We’re just entering the second phase: it will become its own thing, with its own identity.

Lisa Naftolin was most recently Creative Director of Art + Commerce and will be Executive Director, Creative Branding for Nars beginning in September. She has been a visiting artist at Cooper Union, a visiting critic in Design at Yale, and a mentor in the Photography program at SVA.