I’ve written about The Photo Paper before. And the last time I did I thought to myself that maybe I was nagging a bit. But I’m starting to wonder about that now. Was it really nagging, or was I making a point?

image courtesy of The Photo Paper

See… After… what…? almost two years or  something they finally said to have published the first issues. I guess they actually have physical editions, too, but in any case I downloaded the first issue as a digital version for free (after the first issue you’ll have to pull out your wallet).
This magazine is supposed to have collected all winners and nominees from the Black and White Spider Awards and the Color Awards. They “say” a lot on the Photo Paper website. They mention a lot of names, jurors among others, half of which may not even be truely consciously related to this. And funnily my name used to be on the website, mentioned as one of the photographers published in the magazine, but only until I made a fuss about my subscription being paid for and not delivered.. I’ve been a nominee with one or more images in Spider Awards for the past 4 years and Color Awards for the past 3 years straight, but my name nor my pictures are in this first issue.
Is that because I told them I wanted my money back when they didn’t deliver the magazine after me nagging for a year?
Or is it really so that they are a vanity press and publish your name and picture only when you pay for the subscription? Was that why it took them about a year and a half to publish the first issue? Because they didn’t have enough photographers to pay for being published in the first issue(s)?

Truth be told, there are a good number of really awesome pictures in that digital issue that I paged through, but what’s really the underlying thought for these people to publish this magazine? Would The Spider Awards and Color Awards really want to be related to this magazine still if they were really nothing more than a vanity press?
Anyone out there who’s featured in this magazine and has NOT paid for a subscription? (employees, family members of employees and acquaintances of family members of employees are not allowed to answer this question 😉 ).