purple MAGAZINE F/W 2007 issue 8
This issue is really dark.
And it’s not a coincidence. All my friends were thinking dark thoughts, making Grim Reaper artworks, shooting fashion stories after sunset, and working the witching hours. These stories chronicle their sentiments, and the obscurity they embraced. We all experience darkness, but no one wants to escape it.
We want the night to go on forever. We revel in the night. Darkness mirrors oneself — in reflections that don’t lie. Darkness is the only reflective space left in a world of distractions, a world where you can’t think clearly, where you don’t have time to talk, or simply be by yourself.
It’s no accident that the vanitas theme in sixteenth century art was given voice in Hamlet’s thoughts on death, while he contemplated Yorick’s skull. A skull isn’t frightening or macabre: it’s a ghost in a shell — a memento mori for the living, a reminder that human life is artifice, a trompe l’œil, and that you have to fight to stay alive.
Of course darkness is also a place for fun, as you can see in the pictures I obsessively take at parties. The night is so sensual, with its uninterrupted beauty, and is the “shot/countershot” of this issue, the hidden side of the magazine that emerges on these page. Don’t fear the darkness — embrace it.
— OLIVIER ZAHM
FEATURING:
Harmony Korine by Olivier Zahm
Philip Seymour Hoffman by Bill Powers
Dash Snow by Olivier Zahm
Noritoshi Hirakawa
Juergen Teller
Shalom Harlow
& MORE
CONDITION: Gently used, slight damage on bottom corner
This issue is really dark.
And it’s not a coincidence. All my friends were thinking dark thoughts, making Grim Reaper artworks, shooting fashion stories after sunset, and working the witching hours. These stories chronicle their sentiments, and the obscurity they embraced. We all experience darkness, but no one wants to escape it.
We want the night to go on forever. We revel in the night. Darkness mirrors oneself — in reflections that don’t lie. Darkness is the only reflective space left in a world of distractions, a world where you can’t think clearly, where you don’t have time to talk, or simply be by yourself.
It’s no accident that the vanitas theme in sixteenth century art was given voice in Hamlet’s thoughts on death, while he contemplated Yorick’s skull. A skull isn’t frightening or macabre: it’s a ghost in a shell — a memento mori for the living, a reminder that human life is artifice, a trompe l’œil, and that you have to fight to stay alive.
Of course darkness is also a place for fun, as you can see in the pictures I obsessively take at parties. The night is so sensual, with its uninterrupted beauty, and is the “shot/countershot” of this issue, the hidden side of the magazine that emerges on these page. Don’t fear the darkness — embrace it.
— OLIVIER ZAHM
FEATURING:
Harmony Korine by Olivier Zahm
Philip Seymour Hoffman by Bill Powers
Dash Snow by Olivier Zahm
Noritoshi Hirakawa
Juergen Teller
Shalom Harlow
& MORE
CONDITION: Gently used, slight damage on bottom corner
This issue is really dark.
And it’s not a coincidence. All my friends were thinking dark thoughts, making Grim Reaper artworks, shooting fashion stories after sunset, and working the witching hours. These stories chronicle their sentiments, and the obscurity they embraced. We all experience darkness, but no one wants to escape it.
We want the night to go on forever. We revel in the night. Darkness mirrors oneself — in reflections that don’t lie. Darkness is the only reflective space left in a world of distractions, a world where you can’t think clearly, where you don’t have time to talk, or simply be by yourself.
It’s no accident that the vanitas theme in sixteenth century art was given voice in Hamlet’s thoughts on death, while he contemplated Yorick’s skull. A skull isn’t frightening or macabre: it’s a ghost in a shell — a memento mori for the living, a reminder that human life is artifice, a trompe l’œil, and that you have to fight to stay alive.
Of course darkness is also a place for fun, as you can see in the pictures I obsessively take at parties. The night is so sensual, with its uninterrupted beauty, and is the “shot/countershot” of this issue, the hidden side of the magazine that emerges on these page. Don’t fear the darkness — embrace it.
— OLIVIER ZAHM
FEATURING:
Harmony Korine by Olivier Zahm
Philip Seymour Hoffman by Bill Powers
Dash Snow by Olivier Zahm
Noritoshi Hirakawa
Juergen Teller
Shalom Harlow
& MORE
CONDITION: Gently used, slight damage on bottom corner