Dog Food for the Mind and Soul

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Two thousand five hundred years after the cynics of Greek philosophy were stomping around in their sandals in the fifth century B.C.E., Jason Eskenazi and some friends opened a can of dog food. Or rather, put together a zine called Dog Food, the second issue of which was released this past spring.

It came out of an idea conceived in Istanbul over conversation and some wine, that potent elixir for bright ideas. With friends, both Turks and foreigners, Mr. Eskenazi set up a series of presentations for local photo groups called the “Cynics Photo Symposiums.” They offered respite from what they viewed as the rigid landscape of photography in Turkey and â€" in keeping with the ancient cynics’ embrace of the simple and virtuous â€" were free of charge.

“We were kind of down on the very, kind of not out-of-the-box way the Turkish photo schools were working,” said Mr. Eskenazi, who developed Dog Food with Berge Arabian, Laurence Cornet, Laura de Marco, Frederic Lezmi, Hüseyin Yilmaz and Arjen Zwart. “At one point we were sitting in a cafe, having a glass of wine and just saying, ‘We should make a newspaper,’ ” he said.

Previously, Mr. Eskenazi â€" whose not out-of-the-box C.V. includes work as a nighttime watchdog at the Metropolitan Museum of Art â€" had been asking students in a workshop in Turkey what movies they had seen and what books they had read. They could barely name anything with a reference outside of photography, he recalled. It was frustrating to learn that these stiff-collared university types basically did not know anything. A discovery that might invite the scorn of the modern-era cynic.

But the playful, inclusive feel of Dog Food is anything but cynical as we mean it today. “We love photography in all it’s glory,” is one of the zine’s opening lines on a page called “Dog Barks.” The rest of the page is devoted to giving a passionate and generous definition of what a photo is and what it can do â€" all opportunity and no closed doors.

Ersin Pertan, courtesy of Annie G. Pertan A still from the set of “The Tired Soldier.”

The free zine is, in some ways, a gleefully eclectic improvisation, with different pages curated by different contributors. The first issue is sort of a Turkey-based issue (its next issue will be New York-based), but it includes a brief history of the Studio Jonker in the village of Egmond aan Zee in the Netherlands, an essay on photographs taken on the set of a 30-year-old censored Turkish movie, full-page fingerprints of Istanbul photographers’ “trigger fingers,” a racy double-spread still from the 1967 film “I Am Curious â€" Yellow” and a handwritten interview in which the photographer Michael Ackerman reveals that his favorite breakfast cereal growing up was Captain Crunch. (Ever faithful to the ancient cynics, he is asked if there is an object, big or small, that is most dear to him. The answer? No.)

The materials frequently reference the past, whether it’s Mr. Ackerman’s childhood, or decades or millenniums ago. “There is no news, it is not news-related at all,” said Laurence Cornet, Dog Food’s roving reporter. “It is inspired by untold stories, archival stories, with intimacy. It collects perspectives of past and present to create a sense of community,” she said.

And the emphasis on a holistic approach to being a photographer â€" or any variety of alert, active human beings â€" is marked. Both issues invite photographers to list the films and books that inspire them. It’s like punk-rock pamphleteering, but with a much nicer ethos.

As print media becomes as antiquated a concept as polytheism or classified ads, one might wonder why anyone might invest any time cutting and pasting a 36-page paper object by hand. Both issues are available online as a PDF, but its creators intended Dog Food to exist outside of the digital world. “It was really important for us to have a tactile magazine,” Mr. Eskenazi said. “We really want people to have that kind of ’80s feel, and in some ways, the Soviet-era kind of feel, of people passing literature around under the table,” he said.

“It’s about intimacy,” Ms. Cornet said, “like when you have a photo that you keep in your wallet â€" that’s a physical reminder of that memory.” It’s a conversation that insists on being shared, she said, summoning a definition of sharing that means two people in the same room looking and discussing one thing together. “You can imagine the magazine as good sharing time, between photographers or people involved in or interested in photography, and this material is really important in giving this feeling,” she added.

It’s also been a learning experience for everyone involved. Dog Food is nourishment for the wide-eyed cynic in a cynical age. “I guess I didn’t really realize this before â€" the word cynic has almost the opposite meaning from how it is now,” Mr. Eskenazi said, who pointed out the many links between the words “dog” and “cynic,” not least that they share a root word in ancient Greek.

“It’s sort of pejorative now, like this person’s jaded, they know too much, and before it was the ancient Greek understanding of living virtuously and in harmony with nature and not to be too caught up trying to pursue fame or glory or material things and so on,” he said. “And I just thought that was a fascinating thing to pick up on.”

Dog Food magazine A photo recovered from Studio Joe, an old shop in Beirut, Lebanon, as described in an essay by Laurence Cornet in the first issue.

Hard copies of Dog Food are currently available at Dashwood Books on Bond Street in Manhattan.

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