Thursday 13 December 2012

Darwin's Natural Selection in Action?


Something is bothering me...  

A new magazine has been started by a couple of Newport undergraduates.  They have produced the first issue and are now working on the second.  They are open to submissions, although (according to one of the editors) have not pursued anyone to ask them to get involved for the 2nd issue.  They have received work from the UK, Europe and even from the USA, but interestingly, for issue 2, all of those who have been in touch are of the same gender.  They are men.

Why is this?  Could it be due to the nature of the submission process?  I don’t think so.  Even though both editors are men, they have female friends within their wide social networks.  They are surrounded by girls at university.  There are girls and women on their own photography courses.  Also, the publication was launched at the recent 100 Years of Newport festivities, where, seemingly many working professionals expressed an interest, and some have even offered themselves up as potential contributors in the future.  Based on these facts, there doesn’t seem a glaringly obvious reason why there has been no interest from women.

Could it be to do with the title?  ‘Darwin’ and its associations with a bearded Victorian scientist who revolutionised our understanding of the world with his research and writings?  I doubt it - after all, girls do science too...

The two guys running the show just raise their eyebrows when I start to bang my little feminist drum (in fact, I get the impression that they -and a few others - think I am more than a bit ridiculous when it comes to my gender-centric obsession) but seriously, there is a real problem here that their ‘It’s not about gender, it’s about photography’ doesn’t even begin to sort out.  

I’d really like to know why the girls/women out there are not flooding the Darwin inbox with work...  If anyone has any theories, please do get in touch, and if you have any work that you are proud of - then send it to Darwin, and let’s hope that some of it gets into issue 3.

You can send work to Darwin at:  darwinmagazine@gmail.com

Check out their blog:  http://darwinmagazine.tumblr.com