If you're going to launch your overpriced mag in London, best make it stand out from the usual glut of freesheets, tossed-off glossy mags and flyers that clog shelf space in any hipster hangout worth its Cheap Monday jeans. At the UK launch of Brooklyn photography magazine Capricious last night, hosted at Hoxton Square's KK Outlet we lost count of how often the shop assistant had to tell people that the edition they were hungrily pawing did in fact cost £14.
Well, that's what you get for printing on cheap paper - which is a shame as the collection is well worth a look. Luckily the boutique shop has daubed the walls of its gallery with reproductions for the rest of August.
Issue 8 is "made in honor of the Animals", and the theme loosely concerns relationships between the animal kingdom and humanity in their respective habitats. So we have a hare incongruously laid out against a porcelain toilet, and a lion apparently thriving in a residential habitat. Charlotte Dumas' shot of a prone horse's spinal column captures a rare fragility in such a monstrously powerful beast, while Allard Boterenbrood's wall-squashed mosquito perhaps speaks most accurately about man's attitude to the wilder world.
More fun is had by Jasper van den Brink, who attaches LED lights to a pigeon and makes a "light dance" in the sky before photographing the results, while Jürgen Perthold does what any curious cat owner has contemplated and attaches a night-vision camera to his moggie's mane in order to discover the route of her nightly perambulations.
Recommended- though perhaps not enough to shell out £14 quid on the magazine, particularly when you notice that the Americans pay just $20.
The exhibition is at KK Outlet, Hoxton Square, until 30th August. Entry is free.
