Dear reader,
Hello and welcome to this part of the internet! This lovely place is dedicated to talking about all things photography, specifically photographs by female identifying photographers. What does that mean? It just means that the photographs featured on this website are created by people who feel female. Simple.
And who am I? My name is Gwen Cinelli and I am the founder of the magazine as well as the current executive editor. I am a city girl born and raised outside of Chicago, IL, United States. My love of photography came from a family member who insisted I take a photography course at my high school. I continued this passion by getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I recently graduated from the school, and even though people told me, it was hard to transition to a life without being in an educational system.
Great story, but what does it have to do with the magazine? Great question! Honestly, I was not doing so hot mentally and I was looking around the internet trying to find a source that talked about photography in a way that was interesting, but also educational to get my creative juices flowing again. I ran into a huge problem when I was researching.
It was only men talking about photography. I could not find what I was personally looking for online, so I stopped searching.
A few months went by and a friend of mine contacted me about featuring myself in her concept magazine she was creating. I thought, “Wow. That’s a really cool idea. What if I made a magazine?” And I started to draft a plan. Through her consultation, I made a rough year plan and a backbone for the idea I had of this magazine. I hit a wall at a certain point where I could not work on it by myself anymore. I knew then I had to add more people and create a staff for the magazine to keep going. With more people on board, the idea fully flourished into the physical world.
And now, you are reading this because we all took a chance on an idea.
OURS magazine’s mission is to bring female identifying photographers to the forefront of the world and be a resource for the history of female photography. That’s what I was searching for through the internet, but never found. Instead I created the platform in which those who identify as female could speak and write about these topics with their own voices, but also a place for those who are searching for this information that is spoken and written by people who identify as females. A place that could be ours.
I hope you, reader, enjoy what we write, what we create and the photographs that will soon be published on this site. It has been an incredible ride to start this endeavor and I cannot wait to see where it leads.
Thank you for reading and I hope to talk to you soon.
Keep being you,
Gwen Cinelli
Founder of OURS Magazine
Executive Director of OURS Magazine
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