The latest issue of Nature Vision Magazine is now available. This issue was shaped slowly and intentionally, with a focus on stillness, solitude, and the quieter interior spaces that photography can open for us.
If you’ve spent time with the issue, we’d love to hear how it landed.
You might consider:
Which essay, interview, or portfolio stayed with you the longest
Whether a particular image or passage lingered after you closed the PDF
How the overall tone or theme resonated with your own work or thinking
There’s no right way to respond — brief impressions are just as welcome as longer reflections.
If you’re commenting on a specific article and the author is active on NPN, feel free to @mention them, or include the article title and author’s name from the table of contents so they can easily find your thoughts.
Thank you for spending time with the issue, and for continuing the conversation here.
David, Jennifer: WOW! I absolutely love what you have done with the winter issue. Kudos for a wonderful work. To be honest, I had decided not to renew my subscription to NPN, not that it wasn’t good or valuable, but with the amount of photographic “stuff” I regularly consume, I found my self doing the “two minute scroll” through it (and other publications as well) and decided that if two minutes was all I was willing to commit to any publication I had to ask myself was it worth the price. An hour after opening this issue and reading and absorbing most of it (and re-reading a few pieces) I will be re-subscribing to NPN again. This is a fabulous effort of evolution for your publication! Hank Erdmann
Thank you for the kind words, Hank, and I’m so glad that it inspired you to keep your subscription! We really poured our hearts and souls into this to make it a premier publication, so this warms our hearts.
I completely understand where you’re coming from. We all have reduced attention spans today, and part of what we want to inspire with NPN and NVM is to slow down and be more thoughtful.
I have to agree with Hank Erdmann. I cancelled my subscription too—mostly out of frustration after repeatedly running into technical problems with the site. And then I downloaded Issue #11… and it absolutely floored me.
For some time now, I’ve been contemplating the idea of bringing together photography and text around the “here and now” — silence, mindfulness, consciousness, presence. I opened the magazine and landed on this passage, and it felt like someone had articulated exactly what I had been contemplating for quite some time now:
“Stillness becomes not the absence of movement, but a different register of it. In much the same way, mindfulness is often misunderstood as a practice concerned with emptying the mind of thought.”
That line very much resonated with me, and I am looking very much forward to reading the complete issue — I’ll absolutely be renewing my subscription.
Bernhard, thank you; that means a lot. I’m sure @Anna_Morgan will be moved to hear how strongly that passage resonated with you.
Your words get right to the heart of what we were hoping this issue would do: slow things down and create space for presence, rather than answers. It’s incredibly affirming to hear that the work met you where you already were.
I also appreciate your patience with the site. There was a period where things drifted, but this issue marks a very intentional turning point. The focus now is clarity, restraint, and depth, in the magazine and across NPN as a whole. Fewer distractions, more room to breathe.
Thanks again for taking the time to share this, and for being part of the journey forward. I’m really glad you’re here.
I have to agree with the previous poster. The article by Anna Morgan stood out from the rest. I enjoyed it particularly as I thought it had the most ‘meat’.
I do want to make an observation about the idea of creating an issue on a specific theme. That appears to be what the goal was. And that is repetition. I felt that many of the articles were saying the same thing, just in different ways. What I’m trying to say is that the strength of this approach is also its weakness. I’m not sure what the optimum balance is but in my opinion articles on a variety of subjects may actually be a good thing. Anyway, I wanted to post this as something to consider.
I liked the NPN Spotlight feature in this issue. I liked it because it focused on images themselves. Images in almost all articles are there to support the articles. However, articles about images themselves seem to me to be a good idea. An assessment of the image itself and not about the maker of the image.
I really enjoyed this issue, David. Thematically, it worked for me. I can see what Igor is saying. But I think too that’s an effect of editorial decisions that can be adjusted in future issues. Perhaps it’s about giving writers more instructions or even having more clearly delineated ‘sections’ of the magazine.
For example, there is overlap between Creative Perspectives and The Practice. And if Thematic Essays are about Creative Practice, then it all becomes thematic essays about our creative practices.
So, perhaps redefining some of those like this: Thematic Essays, Creativity and Philosophy, Location, Technology and Technique, Interviews. Maybe even an Image Analysis essay? They don’t sound as interesting and high-minded, but they would be more differentiated to the editors, authors, and readers. That would give you parameters for different authors, and give authors a focus for their essays/articles. Guidelines for each section could help writers know what is in their lane and what crosses into others. And it may be that we don’t want some of those. Maybe we just don’t want Location or Technology and Technique. Every photography magazine does that. So then you can focus on the others.
Just a thought. Again, I loved the magazine. I’m looking forward to the next issue.
ML
