Hello mr.

Gay magazines are often consigned to one of two fates: vacuous lifestyle titles that swing between pop culture and personal grooming, or more recently, two a penny erotica journals. Unfortunately, most of them don’t really seem do anything to push gay culture forward in a smart and less stereotypical way. Rare then are the subtle and more nuanced publications like Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom’s Butt, and over the last couple of years Ryan Fitzgibbon’s Hello Mr., the sixth issue of which recently launched in Berlin.

The magazine’s beautiful new issue issue takes on the mystique of Berlin and general ideas about experimentation, featuring a cover and intimate photo series shot by Berlin-based filmmaker and photographer Matt Lambert. It also includes an interview with photographer Marcus Leatherdale who got his start working for Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1980s and has since shot everyone from Andy Warhol to Madonna to Divine, and as usual there are numerous personal essays tackling modern gay life from interesting and individual perspectives.

“Whilst I was traveling I kept dipping in and out of comfortable gay life to back in the closet essentially. I would spend my weekends in Singapore in magazine shops or looking at the newsstands and there was no gay offering. Of course there wouldn’t be in Singapore. I did bring a few issues of Butt with me, but I wouldn’t have been confident enough to read those in public. So when I got back to San Francisco, my main idea was to make something for the community the traditional gay publication didn’t cater to. As soon as I started really forming the core character it was everyone else I was selling the idea to that started encouraging me to make something that was on shelf and that would be disruptive.”

The tagline “about men who date men” has remained a constant. “It’s strategic,” Ryan explains. “It’s apparent it’s a gay magazine, but it makes you rethink the content; it’s just about men who happen to date men – or marry them, or shag them or whatever. It’s stuck and it’s the only copy on the cover. I want it to be there as it goes into markets like Singapore and shops that have never carried a gay magazine. Just the fact that that tagline can exist in those places is another success or step forward.”

Summary 

The general aesthetic of the magazine focuses upon the glossy nature of a traditional magazine, although the imagery explored used is sourced from a broader format, with different photographers being used throughout. The magazine appears is part of an archive. The body copy is positioned clearly in a flush left format in order to promote legibility.