Stack Magazines

"Obviously it was just me in my bedroom..." Joel Seawright is the man behind Rotten, an extraordinary magazine that reveals and comments on the process of magazine making. Joel left school aged 15 and struggled to find work without any qualifications, but he knew he loved photobooks and started playing around with the idea of making a magazine as a way of working with the photographers he admired. He had no experience of publishing; he felt like he didn’t have a voice; and moreover he felt like he needed to prove himself to his dad and show what he could do. The result is a magazine unlike anything else I’ve seen – scrappy and handmade, funny and opinionated, it’s intensely personal but also intended as a general demonstration that these days virtually anyone can make a magazine.