Here at The Last Magazine, we remember what it’s like to be just
starting out, so we’re always happy to support our friends when we can.
Model-turned-photographer Dylan Forsberg launched his magazine
Transmission last year with the idea of approaching editorial content
from a refreshing perspective. “I want to promote honesty, intimacy, and
natural beauty through personal portraits and memoirs,” he says. “I’ve
shot my friends as they talk about problems going on in their lives and
as they think about who they really are while they try to express
themselves. They’re usually so used to acting as someone else on a job
that they sometimes forget how to be themselves.” It just so happens
that those friends include models like Kasia Struss, Zuzanna Krzatala,
Hanne Gaby Odiele, and Alana Zimmer, who fronts the second issue of
Transmission, for which Forsberg is currently raising money through a
Kickstarter campaign.
Forsberg says he first came up with the idea for Transmission because he
got tired of waiting around for other jobs to come his way. “I was
going crazy for a while trying to find something to occupy my mind, but
at the time I only had photography,” he recalls. “I’d shoot, then have
to wait months until the pictures came out before I could finally show
them around. I don’t have an agency, so if I wanted to shoot more, I had
to contact magazines and propose ideas, and I’m really not so good with
e-mailing. Plus, everyone has such a different vision in mind that I
felt my stories weren’t being represented in the way I saw them. So
instead of complaining and fighting with everyone, I thought I’d just
make my own magazine.” Forsberg brought out his first issue last summer,
with Struss on the cover. “The purpose of the magazine is of course
self-expression,” he explains. “I want to share the way I see the world
in the hope that I can help change it to become the place I’d like it to
be. The reason why I started taking photographs years ago was because I
was looking through
Kasia’s (my girlfriend at the time) portfolio and
felt that none of the images captured her natural beauty. She was always
made-up to look like a boy or an alien, with these fierce mannequin
poses with strong protruding elbows and furrowed-brow scowls. I started
shooting her and her friends when we were drunk, camping, having sex, or
walking on the beach, always without makeup, always how they were—and
when I put them online, they luckily spread like wildfire. I realized
that everyone wanted to see these girls as they truly were, because
they’re beautiful just like that.”
The second issue of Transmission is themed around the idea of
transparency, as expressed by two different artists. “I decided that I
only wanted two interpretations of the same theme, so that each
interpretation would have a massive amount of pages to get their point
across,” says Forsberg. “I asked my good friend Paul Maffi to shoot
about seventy pages opposite to me. We each have our own cover, express
Transparency in our own ways, and finally meet in the middle.” Forsberg,
who also worked with painters like Elyse Saunders and Emerald Rose
Whipple for his half of the magazine, says this issue came from a
particularly personal place. “The written portion is what pulls the
entire meaning of the magazine together,” he explains. “For this issue I
decided to share stories from the most traumatic time in my life. I
fell in love, got terrible anxiety, overdosed on sleeping pills, stayed
in a mental hospital, got rejected by a second hospital, got rejected
from a therapist I had spilt my heart to, got into fights, and
eventually left my town to ride my bicycle a thousand miles south to
North Carolina. The story is written somewhat as an internal monologue,
as stream-of-consciousness poetry that I feel will help explain how my
mind worked then. I’ve completely opened up and shared things I haven’t
even shared with close friends—and I’m sure it will give a lot of people
something to gossip about and ridicule, but I’m also sure it will help
many people to feel less alone.”
The issue serves as a catharsis of sorts, with Forsberg using it as both
a space for intimate reflection and, hopefully, a source of comfort to
others. “During the point in my life that I’ve written about, I thought I
was completely crazy until I read The Catcher in the Rye,” he says.
“Suddenly, it was like a weight had been lifted—at least one person
understood me! I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t the crazy one, it was everyone
else who was ‘phony.’ Everyone else just chose to hide these things that
I craved to share. So now, I want to lift that weight for others. I
want to pass on that relief.”
starting out, so we’re always happy to support our friends when we can.
Model-turned-photographer Dylan Forsberg launched his magazine
Transmission last year with the idea of approaching editorial content
from a refreshing perspective. “I want to promote honesty, intimacy, and
natural beauty through personal portraits and memoirs,” he says. “I’ve
shot my friends as they talk about problems going on in their lives and
as they think about who they really are while they try to express
themselves. They’re usually so used to acting as someone else on a job
that they sometimes forget how to be themselves.” It just so happens
that those friends include models like Kasia Struss, Zuzanna Krzatala,
Hanne Gaby Odiele, and Alana Zimmer, who fronts the second issue of
Transmission, for which Forsberg is currently raising money through a
Kickstarter campaign.
Forsberg says he first came up with the idea for Transmission because he
got tired of waiting around for other jobs to come his way. “I was
going crazy for a while trying to find something to occupy my mind, but
at the time I only had photography,” he recalls. “I’d shoot, then have
to wait months until the pictures came out before I could finally show
them around. I don’t have an agency, so if I wanted to shoot more, I had
to contact magazines and propose ideas, and I’m really not so good with
e-mailing. Plus, everyone has such a different vision in mind that I
felt my stories weren’t being represented in the way I saw them. So
instead of complaining and fighting with everyone, I thought I’d just
make my own magazine.” Forsberg brought out his first issue last summer,
with Struss on the cover. “The purpose of the magazine is of course
self-expression,” he explains. “I want to share the way I see the world
in the hope that I can help change it to become the place I’d like it to
be. The reason why I started taking photographs years ago was because I
was looking through
Kasia’s (my girlfriend at the time) portfolio andfelt that none of the images captured her natural beauty. She was always
made-up to look like a boy or an alien, with these fierce mannequin
poses with strong protruding elbows and furrowed-brow scowls. I started
shooting her and her friends when we were drunk, camping, having sex, or
walking on the beach, always without makeup, always how they were—and
when I put them online, they luckily spread like wildfire. I realized
that everyone wanted to see these girls as they truly were, because
they’re beautiful just like that.”
The second issue of Transmission is themed around the idea of
transparency, as expressed by two different artists. “I decided that I
only wanted two interpretations of the same theme, so that each
interpretation would have a massive amount of pages to get their point
across,” says Forsberg. “I asked my good friend Paul Maffi to shoot
about seventy pages opposite to me. We each have our own cover, express
Transparency in our own ways, and finally meet in the middle.” Forsberg,
who also worked with painters like Elyse Saunders and Emerald Rose
Whipple for his half of the magazine, says this issue came from a
particularly personal place. “The written portion is what pulls the
entire meaning of the magazine together,” he explains. “For this issue I
decided to share stories from the most traumatic time in my life. I
fell in love, got terrible anxiety, overdosed on sleeping pills, stayed
in a mental hospital, got rejected by a second hospital, got rejected
from a therapist I had spilt my heart to, got into fights, and
eventually left my town to ride my bicycle a thousand miles south to
North Carolina. The story is written somewhat as an internal monologue,
as stream-of-consciousness poetry that I feel will help explain how my
mind worked then. I’ve completely opened up and shared things I haven’t
even shared with close friends—and I’m sure it will give a lot of people
something to gossip about and ridicule, but I’m also sure it will help
many people to feel less alone.”
The issue serves as a catharsis of sorts, with Forsberg using it as both
a space for intimate reflection and, hopefully, a source of comfort to
others. “During the point in my life that I’ve written about, I thought I
was completely crazy until I read The Catcher in the Rye,” he says.
“Suddenly, it was like a weight had been lifted—at least one person
understood me! I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t the crazy one, it was everyone
else who was ‘phony.’ Everyone else just chose to hide these things that
I craved to share. So now, I want to lift that weight for others. I
want to pass on that relief.”
