Pennine Lines w/c 15 September 2024
|| Mild and dry || Good crossover temps ||
The Boss, Yarncliffe || Climber: Shauna Coxsey
|| Focus On... ||
Work In Print
One of the slow burning benefits of having witnessed history back in April of this year, when Shauna Coxsey repeated The Boss at Yarncliffe, arrived this week in the form of a copy of Klettern magazine from Germany. The latest issue includes an interview with Shauna, with a couple of my images of The Boss to go with it, so check if out if you see a copy and/or can read German or have the inclination to Google translate it all.
I have to say actually receiving a physical copy came as something of a surprise, as part of my personal magazine expectations baked into my psyche stem from the late 2000s. In many ways this era ushered in the decline of the UK climbing magazines, where along with not being paid very much for image use in magazines in the first place (that is if you got paid at all, or paid without having to chase them up a few times first) I distinctly remember actually having to go out and cough up a few quids worth of that hard-won cash and buy a physical copy of the magazine to even see your my work in print. Hardly surprising then that a lot of us just stopped bothering submitting images to the mags at all. So it was great to see a couple of my images in print again in Klettern, although it does expose the fact that my grade C in GCSE German doesn’t go very far these days in terms of actually reading the magazine. Still looking for an article containing directions to the Bahnhof, taking the first straße on the left, then ordering two beers and a coffee mit sahne.
In between attempts || Climber: Shauna Coxsey
Climbing mags are always something of an emotive subject for climbers of a certain age. Talk to anyone who came through into climbing in the 1980s or 1990s and you’re likely to trigger nostalgic musings about magazine articles they still remember word-for-word to this day, cover photos, action shots and even adverts forever seared into their consciousness. Obsessives might even retain throwaway phases from local news reports; who remembers a Peak new route described as being popular with “chubby lads with Nikons”? Part of this is of course selective memory rose-tinting, ignoring the pages after pages in every issue you’d skip over (always the mountaineering bit, sorry), sub-par photos (of which there were plenty, despite a lot of solid gold images) and the pages of classified ads at the back which seemed anachronistic even in the late 90s. But still, in the content-vacuum of the pre-web era magazines were digested with a fervour which it would be hard to understand or convey today, and had a huge impact on shaping tastes and trends and ethics of the time. For this reason most of us climbing at that time will have some tale or other regarding how one particular photo or article stuck with us or inspired us to do such-and-such or go on to X Y or Z venue. And plenty of us then regret getting rid of all our back-issues during that last house move.
However, it would be interesting to know if that level of nostalgic affection extends to the mags of the late 2000s era into the 2010s for climbers starting out in climbing at that time, or indeed the mags of today to climbers starting new right now. With the rise of the internet in the 2000s stealing much of the mags’ thunder on the immediacy of news reporting and hence relevancy - once something the mags had a monopoly on - and then with the mags themselves chasing diminishing returns on subscriptions and ad revenue, that era feels like it was the beginning of the end of climbing magazines as we knew them. Add into that mix the awkward lurch to digital imaging catching the image-repro side of things off guard, and of course in latter years the democratising impact of social media meaning suddenly photographers didn’t even need the mags' help to get their work out there in some form. Climbing magazines arguably failed to slip into any of the emerging niches that the social media age opened up, instead trying to be everything to everyone, a tough act to pull off. Some would argue the slide into somewhat derivative, predictable or formulaic content (especially endless rehashed training articles) in the 2010s being both part of the cause and part of the symptoms of the decline. And by decline I mean that there’s currently only one surviving magazine from that era, publishing a relatively thin edition six times a year, when there use to be two or three competing magazines publishing monthly only 15 or 20 years ago, all in the face of increasing numbers of climbers participating, and apparently more money in 'the sport' than ever.
There have of course been attempts to reinvent the climbing magazine in the UK over the years - anyone around in the late 2000s may remember the small format Friction Magazine with some fondness, for example. And it’s been encouraging to see a few much smaller-circulation enthusiast publications pop up recently like Spotter. But it would be great in the UK if we had something like the rebooted Summit Journal from the States, which I am yet to see a copy of in person but am hearing good things about. British climbing desperately needs something big and lushly produced two or three or four times a year, with premium quality long-form content that isn’t trying to fight a losing battle with social media for news, reviews or attention-grabbing throwaway stuff. A mag with a sustainable commercial model in partnership with brands that actually works FOR the content, instead of old-school print ads which everyone ignores anyway, and one which can pay writers, photographers and artists appropriately to go out and create, and pay the staff to work behind the scenes to produce it. It should be possible, it’s been done in other sports, other sectors, so why not climbing in the UK?
|| Recently Through The Lens ||
September is the very definition of the seasonal crossover month; temptingly chilly evenings on the grit, while trying to wring the last value from the roadside utter grot of the limestone. Good times.
|| Fresh Prints ||
Planning some autumn jaunts further afield? I know I am. Here's a bit of rock appreciation on black & white film from outside the Peak in the Print Shop.
