Dear Elmar Bambach, Julia Marquardt and Birgit Vogel, you dedicate each issue of your Magazin über Orte to a new place. The current issue is about the “Tatort” (crime scene). What inspired you?
The “crime scene” was a new aspect for the magazine. A place that is in principle defined after a happening, namely the action. And we wish to show a variety of places in our magazine.

Concentration camps, crimes, accidents, battlefields - this issue is very dark and sinister.
This is exactly what interested us. The last themes like “kitchen”, “park” or “desk” were not so clearly bonded with a certain association. The crime scene on the other hand is a place of a crime, a homicide; so definitely a negative thing. It was a challenge for us to make a multifaceted issue, with uncommon and unexpected perspectives.

Are you misanthropes? Or how did you came up with the idea to make a magazine only about places?
We are interested in places. Places are full of traces and they also tell many things about people. You can search for something, discover and find things there. Places as a theme suit to this way we see the magazine: a bit mysterious, often indirect and remote.

What does a place need that you dedicate it a whole issue?
We actually think that every place would work for a complete issue. For us the spectrum and the series of the magazine is more import and we choose places we are interested in. The borderline question appears every time: where does a place begin? And where does it ends? Is the “dream” also a place? Or the “flipside”? This are the questions we are faced up to. And it is important for us to answer them anew over and over.

The next issue is about “home”. Can you already tell us something about it?
“Home” is for us again a kind of enlargement of the term place. “Home” is mainly a personal feeling, an attachment to a familiar place. Concomitant it is also understood as homely and concrete, as your own four walls. We find this ambiguity interesting and both sides should be found. But the issue will surely tell more about the association as of the concrete place, in contrast to the issue “desk” or “kitchen”, that are also placed in a homely environment.

How long do you need for the production of the issue? How do you proceed?
As soon as one issue is released we begin working for the next one. We learn new things every time. The start is a soon as possible agreement of the new theme. Then we start with the research of already existing works that we can imagine in the issue. This phase is very important for us because only like this we can win a feeling about how the theme can work and where the hassle is. Crucial is for us if we can wangle the balance between the individual works. A kind of river should be generated, in which every work, equal if famous or not, short or long, should find it’s place and is presented in an adequate way. Decisive for the magazine is the choice and the combination. The issue is working if we are establishing a collective ambiance at the end and if the individual works do not appear isolated. This is our goal. To reach that we are testing a lot, we discuss about the choice and the order and work intensely on the layout. We are often firmly in the last weeks deciding which works are being shown in the issue. This process is very exhausting but also exciting and we are having lots of fun doing it. What is difficult is when we have to reject some authors, whose work we liked, but finally did not fit in the combination. We are making an effort to be as honest and fair as possible.

Who are your readers?
Many readers are surely coming from fields like photography, art, graphic design and literature. Others are interested in a certain issue or a place. And there is also an international interest because the magazine appears bilingually.

What are you favourite magazines?
Three examples: “Archivo”, “mono.kultur” and “The Purple Journal”.

What would be your wish for the magazine?
We would love to find more partners that we can enthuse for our magazine. It can only survive when we find people that can identify themselves with the concept and can also financially support us. We can imagine a collaboration bounded by the theme or also a long-term cooperation. We would love to work together with institutions and to accompany each issue with a discussion meeting or a workshop. And certainly we want to develop the magazine first of all.

And finally your statement to the media crisis: is print going to die? What will happen to magazines? Are we going to read in 2020 only with Kindles?
With the media crisis the realization of smaller projects, like our magazine, is becoming more difficult. Some things in the society are concomitant winning proportionality. Thereby the people are becoming more awake, more open and more sensitive. And maybe this social climate is a special chance for the acceptance of remote things and exceptional things. Probably the reading and the reading custom will really change a lot. Precisely classic print media like newspapers, where the more important thing is the actuality, will disappear more on the internet or they will be available through other electronic forms. But on the other hand there will also be a return. The haptic experience with paper and print will win some estimation. This will surely happen in an always smaller becoming niche, but the quality will further exist. Translation: Alexandra Bieber

More details, more pictures and the opportunity to order Magazin über Orte 4 (”Schreibtisch”) and Magazin über Orte 5 (”Tatorte”) immediately here.