Melvin Sokolsky was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the lean years of the prewar era. Here he witnessed the entire spectrum of the human condition played out across a tough and tight-knit community. This experience was countered by a universe of visual riches found in the museums and books he regularly devoured. Melvin spent his days framing and logging precise mental and emotional images long before he had a camera to capture them. At age ten he began taking pictures using a box camera, though he was frustrated by his inability to create prints that had the “nice pearly finish” of his father’s old photos. “It was then that I realized the importance of the emulsion of the day,” he recalls. Never satisfied, always questioning, and fiercely creative, young Melvin Sokolsky began to live from one private epiphany to the next.

Marco Grob started in photography by assisting photographer Chria Ann Miller in Los Angeles, USA. On his return to Switzerland, he opened his first studio working with still-life. But after a while he decided to make a career change towards portraiture, fashion and advertising. He has photographed Seal, Boy George and Dave Gahan for Magazines like GQ, Marie Claire, Elle Cosmopolitan, Die Zeit, Style etc. His advertising clients include Levis, Adidas, Zenith, UBS, Nike, Seat and Louis Vutton, to name a few.

Clayton Cubitt, (aka “Siege”) has his photographic finger stuck in many pots. His highly stylized editorial work has appeared in Surface, Rolling Stone, and The FADER, among other publications. Meanwhile, on the web, he chronicles his personal and professional life in photograph and words on his weblog The Daily Siege. His work is, more often than not, relentlessly sensual, saturated in deep colours, infused with an explicitness that lays its subject as bare as possible. Working within his own philosophy that inspires him to shoot with no holds barred, Cubitt’s lens lingers over muses ranging from the mid-coital form of his fiancée in bed with another woman to a dead baby bird set before him.

PIE is a new quarterly magazine from New Zealand. It mixes art with science, oddities and simple beauty. It´s all about a 360 degrees observation of a special theme. First issue is all about the CIRCLE. Not only nice pictures but lots of knowledge in there!

PIE is always open to contributions. If you´ve got something to say, to show, to link to or whatever, get in contact on PIEPAPER. You will also find some theme-related multimedia content on there. So good!

Chayo Mata a female photographer living in NYC www.chayo.net

By Tom Vincent Creative www.hiimtom.com

When I was developing the concept for the new Belk Department Stores styleguide for their fashion catalogues I had to test my typography concepts. This is an example of a Belk “A book” catalogue (top) and direct mailer (bottom) with my concept applied.