As the art world continues to recover from the devastation of the COVID- pandemic, the recently launched Daisy Chain
Magazine – a new international bi-annual by Phillip Bogart Duncan (former Associate Art Director of Vogue) and Charles Daigrepont Desselle, entirely dedicated to photography – provides a hopeful sign: there is still room for growth and innovation in the creative industries.
Duncan and Desselle’s inaugural issue, Space, features original work by artists including Thibaut Grevet, Shaniqwa Jarvis, Kuba Ryniewicz, Emma Somerton and Zeng Wu. Vogue recently interviewed the co-founders of Daisy Chain about starting their business during a very challenging time magazine, choose the first theme, and craft a final product that’s “somewhere between a twice-yearly coffee table book and a fashion magazine.” Read the full interview below:
Vogue: What was the spark behind the idea of daisy chaining
Charles Daigrepont Desselle: In Daisy Chain became fully formed idea. In our work, we are constantly discovering or rediscovering images so compelling and special that just seeing them on screen feels incomplete. We keep talking about how cool it would be to make a print magazine, but it’s just talk because we’re too busy enjoying our work, traveling the world, and collaborating with talented people. Of course, like nearly everyone else on the planet, the pandemic has forced us to pause. We ran with sparks when we invited [photographer] Emma Summerton to visit us on Hydra Island in . We’ve been living there, in a humble Greek version of a surf shack, and for a few months, coming home from the COVID surge, we decided to ask Emma to come and take a photo with us, just for the enjoyment.
This feels like a long shot, since Emma is so important, and aside from the fact that the pandemic is raging. But we worked up the courage to propose, Emma said yes, and then managed to escape London – lugging two boxes of camera gear. As we cultivate this new bond, ideas flow naturally and unrestricted, from which emerges a dreamlike, psychedelic world called Hydrea, which Emma envisions as Filmed and featured in this issue of the magazine. We are considering publishing a book about our work with Emma, we met nice people at Damiani Editore in Bologna [publisher of Daisy Chain] and the rest is history .
