GAY VOICE, NO SHADE

Pretty things are nice, but pretty things with a purpose are even better. Last week I stumbled upon this  Brooklyn, New York-based magazine called Tenth Zine, which focuses on black gay culture. I haven't seen the magazine itself (it has a print run of about 400 copies) but from what I see on the net the editors have put an emphasis on the quality of the content and it looks really professionally done rather than being a rush job that we so often see from people trying to put magazines out on a small budget. I'm especially in love with the collage pictured above about white boys- the ones we all wanna fuck and the ones we all wanna give a zap sign to. So simple yet so creative. The magazine brings together the voices of gay black men who are active in the arts and cultural industries and from what I am reading, subsequent issues will look at black gay culture across the United States. My favourite quote from one of the editors- Khary Stepth- in an interview with Dazed Digital:
"The black person has always been used as a muse and always been adopted by fashionable people, for a moment. Culture is always looking for something to explore and to commercialise, and to turn into a trend. I don’t mind that, but what I do mind is when we don’t have the vehicles to tell our own side of it. We need to have a diversity and I think to control your own media is the real answer to it."