50 Years, 100 issues, maybe, depending on how you count them

Former PhotoForum Director (2012-2022) Geoffrey Short runs the numbers.

February 2024

The 2023/24 financial year marks a very significant milestone for PhotoForum.

The incorporated society PhotoForum Inc. was formed in December 1973, and the first issue of Photo-Forum Magazine was published in February 1974.

This year, as well as being an anniversary, also sees the publication of issue #100 of PhotoForum magazine: Mirror City by Harry Culy, co-published by PhotoForum and Bad News Books.

The format has changed, and the hyphen is gone, but the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) remains the same.

One hundred issues is a remarkable achievement by any measure, but as it turns out, the task of measuring is slightly complicated. The first issue, in February 1974, rather confusingly carried the issue number 18. The reason for this is that Photo-Forum Magazine evolved from the precursor publications Photographic Art & History (Issues 1 - 4, 1970 - 1971) and New Zealand Photography (issues 5 - 17, 1971 - 1973).

(We have been quietly digitising these pre-cursor magazines and they are now all available for free download in PDF format on our publications page.)

So does that mean PhotoForum has only published 83 issues? Well, yes and no.
Yes, there are 83 issues that carry the ISSN 0111-0411, and thereby are designated as issues of the serial PhotoForum. But PhotoForum Inc. has published many other titles, and in this trumpet blowing exercise, we think it is worth counting them all. These include several books that were published as standalone titles, either in collaboration with other publishers, or by PhotoForum Inc. alone.

The first of these was The Active Eye, published in 1975 by Manawatu Art Gallery as the catalogue for the survey exhibition of the same name organised by the gallery in collaboration with PhotoForum. We will claim that one for our tally.

Similarly, Fragments of a World - A Collection of Photographs by New Zealand Women Photographers
was published by John McIndoe in 1976. Instigated, edited, compiled and designed by the PhotoForum Women’s Book Committee, the reasons it ended up being published by McIndoe rather than PhotoForum are lost to the mists of time, but we feel justified in also adding that to the PhotoForum tally (now 85 if you’re counting).

Between 1977 and 1980 six issues of the Photo-Forum Supplement were published. This coincided with the change of format of the magazine from A4 to a smaller square shape with higher quality paper. The supplement was printed on newsprint and was intended to carry mainly text, but ended up including a substantial number of illustrations (6 more for the tally, total 91).

At a time when PhotoForum’s publication frequency slowed (there was a 3 year gap between issue 55 in 1984 and issue 56 in 1987, then another 7 years before issue 57 in 1994), the sister organisation PhotoForum Wellington, having closed their gallery operation, became more active in publishing, with the substantial titles Witness to Change, (1985) and Rear Vision (1988), (plus 2 = 93).
PhotoForum Wellington also published a long sequence of newsletters that evolved into a magazine format named reView from 1986 to 1990. Rear Vision was designated as a double issue of reView, but there were 18 others we can add to our tally (93 plus 18 = 111).

Harvey Benge‘s Four Parts Religion Six Parts Sin (1993), New Zealand Photography From the 1840s to the Present by William Main & John B. Turner (1993) and Mémoire D'Un Voyage En Oceánie by François Deschamps (1995) were all standalone PhotoForum titles, not designated as issues of the magazine (plus 3 = 114).

So we are still well over the century mark. But wait, the umpire is checking something. Oh, no! We forgot the double issues!

In order to produce some of the more substantial titles, there were seven occasions between 1995 and 2009 when a single book was designated as two issues of PhotoForum (minus 7 = 107).

So, still a century, phew.

And what’s this? The umpire is pointing out that there were also 18 issues of the PhotoForum Members Only Magazine MoMento published between 2008 and 2016.

Huzzah! 107 plus 18 makes a score of 125 not out. A decent score by any measure.

Note: all issues of PhotoForum MoMento are available to view for free in PDF format, and some are also still available in print format on our PhotoForum Publications page.