The phantom of liberty haunts all contemporary culture.
Real Review editorial staff
Fans of Real Review will know this magazine likes to think outside the box. Take, for example, the innovative extra vertical fold that runs down the magazine, giving it essentially a quadruple-page spread. But the latest issue looks very different to the publication we have come to know and love, thanks to its large, empty spaces, which make a brilliant and striking statement on the war in Gaza.
“The phantom of liberty haunts all contemporary culture. At the last moment before this issue went to print, every non-text element (photo, diagram, drawing) was removed from the layout and replaced with an html accessibility description, also known as an ‘alt text’. What this reveals is the medium of communication itself; and what remains is an aesthetic ghost of the original,” writes Real Review‘s editorial staff.
The lead story of the issue is an interview with writer and cultural critic Shumon Basar, who accuses Israel of “normalising ultraviolence by layering horrific images on top of obscene images every single day, like rubble on top of rubble.” Indeed. We have been overly saturated by images of the war, making it too easy to simply look away. But leaving a white box with the alt text instead of the actual image encourages the reader to think more deeply, drawing upon everything we’ve already seen and possibly skimmed over in other media and adding to the power of Basar’s words.
Elsewhere in the magazine, the missing images assume different power. For example, an article on humour and protest, based upon the 2013 book Can Jokes Bring Down Governments, was initially accompanied by pictures of lolcat memes from 2013 and 2023. Sure, we’ve all seen plenty of lolcats, but I’d like to see the particular images the designer chose to contrast with one another across the decade divide. And besides, who doesn’t want some funny cats scattered through their cultural criticism? In this case, the absent images don’t add anything to the story; instead, they become a reminder that something here has been lost.
See my full review and walk through the issue below.
Steven Watson is the founder of Stack, the independent magazine club that delivers a different title every month to thousands of readers around the world. He lives in London with his wife and two sons, and is running out of shelf space.