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NEWS

ARam Kim, publisher of BLINK magazine, featured as a tastemaker in PDN December 2012


The photography magazine Blink is edited, designed and published by its founder, ARam Kim. She started the magazine for the simplest of reasons: because she enjoys sharing the work of photographers with others. “I do not [make] any profit from [the magazine],” Kim says. Since Blink rarely includes any advertising, the money she earns by selling one month’s issue covers the cost of producing the next month’s issue. Kim also freelances, doing a myriad of jobs including portfolio reviewer, contest jury member, and magazine and book contributor. What has attracted many readers to Blink is that it’s filled to the brim with photos and photographer interviews, written in both English and Kim’s native language, Korean. A recent issue, which had an image from Jill Greenberg’s “End Times” series on the cover, included work from such varied photographers as Daniel Gordon, Corey Arnold, Desiree Pfeiffer, Dean West and Emma Kisiel. The thread that links all of this work together is that it caught Kim’s eye (she says she is attracted to “beautiful colors and beautiful composition”). “I see Blink as my art gallery,” Kim explains. “I collect art pieces that I love and share them with people all over the world.” She finds these works by tapping a variety of sources, including photo competitions, art catalogues and exhibition notices; social networks; and popular online photo-hosting platforms, such as Flickr and Tumblr. Among her favorites sources are the websites and newsletters for Paris Photo, Head On Photo Festival, Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3), GetxoPhoto and Saatchi Gallery. Kim says each week she also receives nearly 100 submissions for her consideration, but these rarely make it into the magazine because “trying to cover all the work that exists is not my concern. I have no desire to feature work [that is] not beautiful [to me]. Other magazines already do that … I just want to concentrate on my own taste for the Blink.” Even if she likes a particular series of work, Kim usually won’t publish it if it’s been featured in the South Korean media. But, she adds, “Korea is behind [the] worldwide art scene and a barren desert of [photography] content,” so that’s rarely an issue. Mostly, Blink “features the latest exhibitions and artists in the international spotlight,” she explains. These tend to be well-known photographers. However, they often send her new work to consider for the article, so the images in Blink haven’t necessarily been seen everywhere. Kim also delights in being able to include the work of emerging photographers; she recently published photos by Nico Krijno, Dido Fontana and Roger Weiss, for instance.Though Blink is only sold on newsstands in South Korea, single-issue copies and subscriptions are available on the Blink website for readers in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Australia, Europe, Canada and the United States. That influential designers, editors and curators read the magazine is a testament to Kim’s social networking prowess. For each issue, she posts a video on www.blinkreflex.com so people can preview it. She also posts layouts on the site as well as on Facebook and links to them on Twitter. “When I planned the first issue of Blink, I just wanted to publish an art book [that I would] want to have,” Kim says. But now that she’s met some of her readers and had artists she admires contact her with words of encouragement, she adds that it’s “miraculous to me.”

—Meghan Ahearn, PDN December 2012