It feels like the world is spinning faster, with a deluge of new information every day, information forgotten as it's shoved off the news cycle in days: political upheaval, war, AI, earth crises, climate change… Stability slips away. To muffle the constant noise, we felt the need to turn inward and decided to do a feature on mysticism.
As we prepared our feature, we received the results of our A Visual Dialogue, a mystical narrative in itself. Coincidentally we also noticed a wave of submissions were focused on mysticism, spirituality, magic and religion. What began as a feature on mysticism evolved into our first entirely themed issue, exploring belief systems in their diverse forms.
For the feature itself, The Manifestations of Mysticism, we invited eleven photographers from around the world, whose works resonate with mysticism across spiritual, historical, political and social contexts. Photographer Chen Chuanduan, also a collaborator in this issue’s A Visual Dialogue contributes an insightful article that digs deep into the topic. We hope to stir your curiosity. See and read here:
With a shared interest in mythology, Alice Muratore from Italy and Chen Chuanduan from China inspired each other and made the invisible visible by creating a fictional narrative story for A Visual Dialogue. See and read here:
The works of our selected artists in The 10 are each interconnected by the overarching theme of mysticism.
