What's the new magazine cover of our time? Recently, we've been pondering this very question. In this issue, stylist Alastair McKimm finds a potential answer. Springing out of his fascination with Instagram, and its role as the new magazine, where each user is an editor, he curates a series of twenty his own instagrams into very contemporary show. Inviting Dean Mayo Davies to write essay on subject, Alastair gives fantastic statement both visual and textual kind. now showing.

Anders Sølvsten Thomsen recreates his own works in collaboration with artist Margot Bowman who's animated alterations fill the pages of issue 6. While bold statements of copycatting and heavy referencing are slung through the air from one person's critical point of view to the next, this contributor decides to pull from his own works when illustrating his idea of contemporary today. With a genuine interest in this medium along with a dash of tongue-in-cheek humor, the danish born stylist takes what was and makes it what is.

Anthony Maule, a young fashion photographer who was born in Bath, England, approaches the visual language in a way that is as much experimental as it is aggressively suggestive. Immediately responding to the idea of Contemporary without a moment of contemplation, the series is both bold and direct in its statement and quite clear in its point of view.

When asked to capture his point of view on what's contemporary with the visual language, rather than utilize the world of Fashion, Benjamin takes us to a place of metaphor that is applicable to a number of different things in the world today, and of course one of the most relevant subjects of our time. In this series of photographs, our contributor makes timeless a documentation of various types of weeds, that tell a story of the land in which they grow. Often mistaken for nothing more than an annoyance of mere mutiny, these little wisps of nature are actually a viable contribution that to most, still remain unrealized. With an equal appreciation for the collaborative process experienced when working with his teams of choice in fashion, Benjamin continues his rope walking journey between the seemingly parallel universes.

Before trends, there was tradition. Tradition, equated with rules, is meant to be broken. There are those whose awareness of the times gives them a point of view to reflect culture in the world of style. There are also those whose instinct is the very force behind the pivotal moments of great change in style. She was the source behind the first cover of American Vogue under the leadership of Anna Wintour, which, at the time, of course, was so unheard of that the printers called to confirm that this was, in fact, the image they meant to use for the cover. She was the revolutionary who broke rules and created what is now commonly understood as High Low fashion — mixing Chanel and Lacroix with blue jeans was blasphemous at the time she started this idea of taste. She is the editor who Carine Roitfeld mentions as one of her greatest influences in style. She was and is a personal favorite collaborator to some of the greatest photographers of all time, from Richard Avedon and Irving Penn to her continuing collaboration with Steven Meisel. She is Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, and her passion and larger than life personality is every inch the superstar aura that ruled the eras of fashion through which she has passed.

For a woman who has managed to keep her personal side out of the business during her long and successful career, Christiane Arp, the editor-in-chief of the German edition of Vogue, took her issue of What's Contemporary in an incredibly personal direction.

Sometimes the antithesis of what has been deemed ‘progress' is the most interesting take on any particular subject. Photographer Daniel Sannwald belongs to a generation for whom digital technology as it applies to the creation of images, moving or otherwise, is nothing less than a first language. Despite the fact that high resolution is considered the most valuable format in which to view content, our latest contributor reminds us of the beauty in imperfection when he visits the timeless subject of love through a combination of low quality, yet meaningful images — and a sound that could only be described as a mantra of unity, that he created with his partner, Alejandro. Pixelated, yet powerful, it becomes incredibly obvious that, through contrast, everything is given meaning. The character of Mr. Sannwald is one that can only be described as being made up of smiles, excitement, passion and enjoyably elaborate creativity. With such an idea in mind, his subject of choice seems quite fitting, and leaves us with many things to ponder, including a personal favorite and all too easily forgotten thought — that, sometimes, backwards is the best way of moving forwards.

It is on a very rare occasion that the antithesis of the now suffices as the answer to the new, yet the thought process of Emma Summerton, as revealed in our latest issue, suggests that to ring true. Reaching into the realm of natural beauty and analogue language, relatability is restored to the photographic dialect. What would feel like a move backwards is suddenly a possible move forwards, and the absence of over manipulation of both the image and subject feels alarmingly liberating and fresh.

Throughout the issues we have had the honor to publish in 2012 and 2013, incredibly unique and diverse contributors have shared equally unique points of view about what’s contemporary. With those previous perspectives in mind, it is with great pleasure that we begin the 2014 lineup with the spontaneous, honest, endearing and inherently beautiful point of view of Ezra Petronio. In his 11 Commandments of Contemporary Living, we encounter a series of ideas that he drew from his current moment's point of view. Pulling from his yesterday, as well as today, without falling to his knees in service of the hypothetical tomorrow, the ideas expressed herein offer advice of passion, humility, hard work and gratitude: 'Contemporary is stimulating yourself to take a positive outlook, and to engage the world around you in a constructive manner.' Encouraging both himself and others to find the things in life that bring us inspiration and invigorate our passion for the things that we ultimately love, his frequent motto of stripping down the unnecessary elements so that the essentials may speak makes his message suddenly and abundantly clear: 'Revisiting the past and engaging the present to create the future.'

For the second issue of What’s Contemporary, Photographer/Filmmaker/Philosopher Glen Luchford assumes a contemplative stance in front of the inspiration wall at his office.

Arriving in London in 1983, aged fifteen, Punk and the labour party were a distant memory, The New Romantics had become rockabillies, and Boy George and Margaret Thatcher were global phenomenons. London was a strange place. You could still see the remnants of post war Britain if you looked hard enough, but mostly the city was drunk on its new ultra-ambitious conservative ideals. Yet, in all that transition, it still cultivated small groups of independent thinking creatives. The Grey Organization, for example, was a semi-radical group of skinhead artists from east London. I’d see them in the mornings as I went on the coffee run, and they looked wonderfully menacing marching through Covent Garden in beautiful grey suits and Dr. Martens. Another, Buffalo, was essentially fashion hipsters, centered around Ray Petri, who filled the pages of The Face, Arena magazine, and, my personal favorite, Crunch, which was run by Mark Lebon. I was taken by a mutual friend to see a filming of Nick Kamen's new pop video at Lebon's Crunch studio. The studio was a small garage in Ladbroke Grove, full of cameras and bits of sets, hand-carved phallic penis furniture, and interesting Polaroids scattered all over the place, and it all moped along nicely to the sound of rare dub and a cloud of marijuana smoke. Everyone was beyond cool, dressed in Westwood, Nemeth, and Johnny Moore boots. I don't think I’d ever seen anyone as handsome as Nick and Barry Kamen —even Nick’s girlfriend, Tatjana Patitz, looked drab in comparison — but, most of all, Mark left an impression. He towered over everyone, for a start, and shouted with a big booming voice, just like the comedy film directors in Buster Keaton films. The crew all snapped to attention, and, somehow, in all the chaos, a funny, obscure, brilliantly contemporary handmade video took shape. I later became a lodger at Mark and his then wife Camilla Arthur's house in Kensal Road, along with Kate Moss and Mario Sorrenti. At the weekends, Mark's ten-year-old son, Tyrone, came to stay with us, and we all lived quite eccentrically happy for a while, in crazy 275. Looking back, I still think that one year shaped the way I think more than any other time in my life.

Glenn's is the mantle worn by the children of the downtown that was, is and will always be. Sometimes looking back on the New York where poverty nurtured art and work was a rare occasion, he reflects on, but is not confined to, the past. As present today as he was then, Glenn is a mind whose contents will evoke an interest from the audience for generations — funny, witty, and brilliant. Like so many others to whom we've posed this question, he cringes at the word 'contemporary,' and yet he seems more than able to pull out a point of view on the big picture of our time with thoughts that seem suddenly obvious, funny or just too true to deny. While we all fret over the medium with which we share content, and fumble over our values as to which platform holds the crown of credibility, our latest contributor reminds us that it's all irrelevant if the content itself isn't solid to begin with.

When I first saw Jamie Hawkesworth’s work, it was in the issue of Man About Town that was curated by M/M Paris. It reminded me of the kind of imagery that has, in recent years, grown to be amongst my favorites — the kind of photographs that you would be happy to see on a wall in a gallery or museum, the kind that have a reality and humanity to them sufficient enough to warrant your attention for longer than it takes to gaze upon a page before flipping to the next. Some time went by, until one day I was talking to an editor whose brain I love to pick frequently, and the subject of interesting new talent came up. Jamie was at the top of her list. During the weeks that followed, his name continued to come up in numerous conversations, and it seemed all but written in the stars that he would be an excellent contributor to invite to our stage. When we connected, he was in the middle of working on an interesting project for a small art movement called Preston is my Paris. Belonging to his present moment and being shown nowhere else in the world but in the actual space of this Preston bus station, the project seemed a perfect fit for this collaboration.

We often talk about how fear can be one of the greatest motivators, and about how playing multiple roles on a single project is becoming increasingly more common. When exploring the world of Jeff Bark's photography, we discover that a neurotic passion can also lead to an incredibly effective result of one man's hybrid efforts — personally collecting the bulk of what we see on all of his sets, that are, unbeknownst to most, including myself before this collaboration, actually all shot in studio. With an epic eye for detail, and an alarmingly refined ability to “pre-visualize,” this contributor is armed with everything it takes to produce an idea, feeling and place that draws the onlooker in a way few images are able. Charged with the charisma that some of the greatest artists have been rumored to embody, Jeff is the kind of photographer that, although collaborative, makes you want to let him do his thing while you stand back and witness in awe. Endowed with a seemingly inexhaustible drive to produce the ideas that come to him with wild abandon, it still comes as an impressive surprise that his team is often no larger than himself and one assistant. In the pages that follow, we see images that may vary in subject matter, yet the common thread that binds them together is that each one momentarily pulls you into the place of its own existence.

On a steamy afternoon in early August, I spent several hours in a well air-conditioned diner in Hell’s Kitchen looking at pictures with Joan Juliet Buck. Like a live-action Tmblr with more humanity and a higher IQ, JJB pulled me through the 70+ images she had pulled together in answer to the question 'What’s contemporary?'

hey! how neat.

Lachlan Bailey's work can be seen in a number of impressive publications, including the American, British, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish editions of Vogue. Photographing his friend and partner, Imogen, on two different days around their home, Lachlan created some of the most emotive and intimate images we've seen in a while. The result of their union brings us to a place where we can't help but revel in the realization that reality without interference still trumps the beauty of an overly 'corrected' image.

Calling upon five of the moment’s most relevant women to illustrate his idea of contemporary, this is Luigi Murenu, the untitled version. With complete irreverence for the incessant need to apply labels and limitations to people in the industry, this visionary very beautifully represents the super contemporary concept of a hybrid creative. He is most known for his whimsical workings with hair, and, recently, as an art director, although not by his own request. As he continues to evolve and transform his own ideas, the vocabulary of his creativity expands to new dimensions. While the audience still insists on understanding him through one box or another, Luigi Murenu defies this dated concept and refuses to be confined to a definition for the sake of making it easier for others to understand. Genuineness is the root of his process, and the seed from which all his work grows. Even to hear him speak, one gets the impression that he’s overflowing with so much passion that there couldn’t possibly be a sufficient number of outlets for the flood. Here, in the pages that follow, we are faced with visual expressions of his own ideas of transformation, evolution, and even a little rebellion via being true to his own ideas.

Of the pioneering visionaries, Melanie Ward is most often worshipped as the Goddess of Grunge and leading lady who guided us into a new idea of beauty and style in the early 90s: a cool and effortless sophistication that remains the foundation of how we see things today. Her collaborations with designers over the years have been greatly celebrated, and her ever trailblazing and inspiring modern moves continue to guide our ideas and aesthetics now. Tapping into the zeitgeist and its current pulse of dire yearning for a sense of truth and meaning, Melanie goes beyond her widely known material genius and explores the overall global mood and state of cultural progress in this latest issue.

One of the grandest luxuries of my experience as editor of this project is the ongoing opportunity to be exposed to the brilliant and fascinating streams of consciousness of our contributors, discovering their idiosyncrasies, and the words hidden between the lines of their selected statements, along the way. Oribe, the hairstylist whose work we've enjoyed for decades in the photographs of Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, and a number of others, brings a most fantastic idea of contemporary to this insatiable dialogue. In his response, there is both humor and honesty, as well as an inarguable logic that somehow manages to ring true in a way with which, I'm sure, most would agree. Understanding the importance of a genuine approach to one’s craft, personal style and the adventure of life, Oribe humbly admits to the secret ingredients of his success, crediting hard work, passion and great opportunities as the building blocks of his noteworthy career. Encouraging the audience to realize that contemporary is made up of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and that, rather than attempt to do something in the first degree interpretation of being 'modern,' one should simply do what they want. Capturing these ideas in a series of collages that best represent the inspirations, influences and life experiences that make up his creative DNA, Oribe takes us on a ride where commercial is anything but a dirty word.

Selecting six of the most stunning models of our time as their subject matter, Patrick and Victor Demarchelier have successfully created the most epic moment ever created for an online platform, proving that the quality of content is in no way dependent on the platform through which it is experienced.

Every person represents an idea, every artist, their own brand; Patti Wilson is a stylist whose name evokes thoughts of the new, the cool and an everlasting love for fresh talent. In this issue we see her collaborate with a pair of young and creatively loaded boys known as The Black Soft. Never spending too much time in the past, or in anticipation of the future, Patti chose from the current collections of both ready to wear and Haute Couture when it came to deciding What's Contemporary. Pushing the boundaries of fashion interpretation, she was curious to create a new context for some of what she feels are the most pivotal pieces of the season. Inside, you will find the various colors and shapes brought to life by the incredibly talented art works of The Black Soft as a beautiful statement of fashion, art and style.

Issue 7 brings to the forefront the creations of Rad Hourani who chose to morph architecture, nature and the body to show his point of view. It is by constructing compositions that are the juxtaposed dualities that create new ways of looking at aesthetic that he makes a commentary. His vision of timelessness is revealed by decomposing Versailles, while reconstructing early 20th Century New York architectural elements as totems, photographing the sensuality of la nouvelle vague in his erotic figures, and giving geometrical intricacy to floral patterns. They almost seem anachronistic, yet all the compositions speak to each other effortlessly because each of the elements he chose to explore epitomize timelessness. He tries to find order in the reconstruction of geometrical elements present in his digital canvases, which he conceptualizes to transcend the virtual space of the computer screen into the physical space of a gallery. It seems his gracious approach to art is the stroke of his brush on time.

Lady GaGa, Thierry Mugler by Nicola Formichetti, Verbal (M-Flo), and many others have one unique thing in common — their collaboration with the incredible Dutch artist Rein Vollenga.

In a world where shades of repetition linger all around and create effacing echoes of one another, style is hard to see or find in Fashion, Art or Music, even in people and the everyday. — Richard Bush + Sarah Richardson

Santiago and Mauricio are self-described image makers. Their images are studies questioning primal corporeality in hyper-modernity. They address these dichotomies by augmenting perceptual and sensorial experiences with digital and temporal manipulation. It is their poetic gesture that articulates possible paradigmatic shift of the gaze. In the past year, the image or / and the photograph have been a focal point. From Paris Photo questioning whether the medium of photography should be included in the FIAC, the contemporary art fair, to the International Center of Photography recently asking: “What is a photograph”, it has become apparent that the seamless integration of imaging in the vernacular has destabilized the meaning of the photograph. Digital iconography has become so pervasive that commercial brands are launching their most recent collaboration through Instagram and then subsequently appearing in traditional media. This trend speaks volumes on how we are consuming content, across platforms with different audiences. The question of how iconography exists in various cultural and technological eco-systems leaves us saturated, yet constantly wanting more. Image addiction has become a collective condition for which we are craving a contemplative refuge. Santiago and Mauricio’s methodology, offers a small rupture, a reminder of the processes of image making and capturing.

In a world when everything is fast and immediately directly in your face, what's contemporary would be to show the details and to show the underworld in terms of showing ways to express things in a more modest and subtle way. I would say Contemporary is what's clever and what's clever is to go opposite the system, slowly and subtle and not in your face.

Life, according to fashion editor and creative director Suzanne Koller, is made up of a number of different little things that ultimately seem to create the whole picture. Her advice is simple and broken down into an easy to understand prescription. With beautiful images and precise descriptions, Suzanne presents contemporary in a way that, even if it's not your own, after reviewing her issue, perhaps it will be.

Upon the surface of the multifaceted cube in this issue, we are introduced to the ‘The’s’ that the young Belgian stylist, Tom Van Dorpe finds to be classic and contemporary. Exhibiting his ideas in the form of characters, he’s created his own curatorial edit of points of reference that we are all familiar with or have recently become aware of as new ideas emerge in contemporary fashion and culture.

Tommy Ton's pioneering pictures have played a significant role in further developing the contemporary dialogue occurring each season between fashion's celebrities and attendees, and the incredibly voyeuristic audience that obsessively follows them. Falling in love time and time again from a distance, his fascination with the element of mystery married to a split second of vulnerability, is one of the primary forces leading to what, to this day, is his exclusive photographic signature.

Some issues take days, others weeks and some even take months. This issue took a year and a half. When we first set out to capture the genius of an art form, and subculture, that we all remember from its epic debut to the mass public around 1990, the formula seemed clear and simple — find the legendary icon who helped bring Vogue(ing) to us all when he taught the queen of pop herself, Madonna.

Willy Vanderperre, a longtime favorite of many fashion photography enthusiasts, including myself, has a visual language that can easily be explained as poetic, and not unlike a painting. His distinguishable ability to create some of the most simple imagery, while maintaining the rich emotion, impact and feeling in his images, is a talent few can claim. After all, is simple not amongst the most revered aesthetics of all time, and one of the most difficult things to do well? It is emotion that Willy has chosen to highlight as the subject of what's contemporary at any time, and perhaps even more so today. Using stills taken from a video he has created with the Belgian group Amenra for their song “A Mon Ame,” he fragments strong emotion into a deconstructed series of images that effectively display their own unique and individual meanings. Perhaps different than the meaning to be derived from their collective presentation in motion, they remind us to look more closely at the mystery and meaning hidden within a captured moment. Reminiscent of any great artist during an interview, Willy's voice brings an immediate understanding of the selected visual content. Is your volume on?