Benji Knewman Issue 8 is full of interesting stories. “People believed I worked full-time in photography when in fact I was a full-time fingerprints expert in the Danish police, and used every minute of my spare time shooting image after image. I wanted this photography dream to come true so bad.” / “I had this perception, that I would never meet a girl I’d want to have a serious relationship with in a bar. The opposite came true. No matter how hard I tried to be a serious, unkempt rock musician, it turned out that my biggest accomplishments came from lyrics about love.” / “The first Soviet chewing gum was produced by the confectioner Kalev in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1968, and it was named Tiri-aga-tõmba.
But before it could be released for public consumption, chewing gum was banned by a directive from Moscow.” / “Speaking of exhibitionism and sex, I have no desire to talk about sex per se. When I see some bullshit, some things that people do to each other, something absurd, I want to correct it. But you can’t say to them, “Hey, asshole, do this!” The only thing you can do is to say, “I’m an asshole.” Or “from my point of view,” “my experience was this.”” / “Globalization took place too quickly and we are not adapted to life in it. We do not have that degree of generosity, tolerance, intellectual high-mindedness, and spiritual depth to accept the world in all its diversity. As a result, society becomes even less communicable because each one of us encloses ourselves in our own little global(ized) world.”
Benji Knewman magazine is a publication from Latvia. Life that you can read. Benji Knewman is a man, around 40 years old. He’s trying to be genuine, and it seems he sometimes manages. Just like his grandfather who used to say: “Ben, how you spend your day is how you spend your life!”. Currently Benji Knewman is more everywhere than anywhere. Mostly on the road. He’s still in search of his own perfect day. While looking for it, he curates a biannual bookazine telling stories about people who don’t pretend and who can simply be. Covering a myriad of vocations and lifestyles, as well as geographical locations, they’re living proof that you don’t have to be conventional to have a good life. In the end, everything is going to be great.
Details: Benji Knewman – Issue 8
Bilingual (English / Latvian) with a side of Russian.
140 mm x 200 mm.
Full colour. 9 in 1.
268 pages.
Printed at Skaistāk, Matīsa 51/53 on the sunny side of the street in Riga, Latvia.