TokyoLand

The image on the left page of the above and below spread were to be chosen from. Beautiful little Mia above with her mermaid, or Yellow Dress Girl posing as supermodel, below.

So, Transit magazine in Japan, have published a selection of my Romanian Roma photographic work which I shot over 17 years. Before publishing they sent me three pdf’s to check, to discuss layout, picture sequencing, etc. My previous three blog posts show these pdf’s and my thoughts on them.

So after I replied to the magazine with my comments about those 1st three pdfs I waited. Then a week or two later a further pdf arrived, as per the images above.

This pdf, I’ll call it Option4, had a new title layout, different from the big bold and straight across title I’d preferred from my intial pdf choice, the one with the black pages.

The image sizes on the opening spread were still of different heights, which I think wasn’t so good, not so clean. It would have been better had the both been the same height.

And the black and white images on the second spread were at a different position on the page from those colour images which would follow. Again, I felt it would be better to keep it all at the same height, keep everything uniform.

The image of the girl standing against Alpine resort wallpaper had been removed, as per my suggestion, and in it’s place were two new options for this double page spread. There was little Mia standing in front of a mermaid mural in her house, and their was a girl in yellow dress standing inside a house beside a stairwell bannister. The editor and picture editor wished to know which my preference was, and I choose the girl in yellow dress (2nd image from the bottom, above). I felt this image showed more the transition to the new wealth of the roma. It showed the big houses, the chandelier lights, the girl posing as if she were a Western supermodel ( all the Roma girls know how to stand in a seductive model-like pose). Little Mia and her mermaid is beautiful, but told us less I felt about the new nouveau riche Roma lifestyle, and the influence of the West. So, for me, I chose the girl in the yellow dress.

I also made some suggestions about placement of the small map illustration etc. Not sure if it were my place to suggest it, but since they kept sending me pdfs to check.

So those were my thoughts on this Option4. I emailed it off, and waited. The deadline was near.

It was also about this time that I had a query about captions for all the images, the magazine wished to know whether the men in the images in the opening spread, the black and white image, and the opposing colour image, were the same man ? Was it the same man in both Images ? I emailed back, “no, it isn’t, they are different men”.

You can buy the finished magazine, with my 8 page spread of gypsy roma photographs in it, from Amazon.co.jp. It’s a bumper issue, with 194 pages about Eastern Europe.