Tag Archives: Queen

Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘El Cid’ article in ‘Cinema’, beautifully-designed film magazine from 1960s to 1970s by US publisher Spectator International, Inc.

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Cover, Cinema, Volume 1, Number 1, 1963, published by Spectator, International, Inc. in the USA from 1962 to 1976 according to Wikipedia.

Yesterday I turned up a magazine about film that I knew nothing about until I discovered all the issues from just one year, 1963, at the Internet Archive. The publication is named, simply, Cinema and its design and writing styles are reminiscent of an almost now forgotten magazine publishing mini-revolution that was born in the 1960s in Germany then spread to Great Britain, and, via Cinema, to the United States.

Given I grew up in several remote towns in Western Australia sandwiched between desert and ocean, not unlike Robert Krasker, I was exposed to few books and magazines during my formative years.

It was only when I moved to the capital city of Perth – “the most remote capital city in the world” – that I came across a small collection of art, design and photography books and magazines in the art school’s library.

It was in one of those magazines that I came across mention of an art direction genius named Willy Fleckhaus and the revolutionary German magazine for which he was responsible, Twen, and although the library held no copies of it, other publications there mentioned past British magazines that may have learned some lessons from its design, photography, typography and writing – Nova and Queen.

Neither were in publication by the time I went looking for them but other stylish and style-oriented magazines had appeared in the UK by then, including i-D and especially The Face with its exquisite typography and page design by Neville Brody.

Brody pushed the early and sometimes timid innovations of Twen, Nova and Queen into the 1980s at The Face and pushed the arts and crafts of type design and typography into realms those pre-Macintosh magazine designers may well have never imagined.

When I conceived and co-founded former cult Australian photography, visual arts and culture magazine not only Black+White my aim was to go even further beyond Brody’s innovations into something newer again and in a direction more appropriate to the state of Australia culture in the 1990s.

As I did not actually own the magazine my suggestions carried little weight and were often pooh-poohed or simply misunderstood, and they were also dependent on finding a great magazine art director to fulfil them.

Eventually one turned up and during an all too short time in the art director’s chair there, he won fifteen international awards for his innovative and expressive typography, article and cover designs.

Back to Robert Krasker, Cinema and El Cid…

It has been suggested more than a few times that I should put together a book about Robert Krasker, one that goes well beyond Dr Falk Schwarz’s 2012 publication, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker in scope and approach, something more than a simple translation of that book from German into English.

In theory I agree given Dr Schwarz’s European readership certainly know who Robert Krasker was and what he achieved but am sceptical about an Australian publisher taking on such a task given virtually no Australian to whom I speak about our greatest ever cinematographer knows who he was or of the many famous films upon which he worked.

“While not a film for the Eisenstein worshiper, the cinematography of Robert Krasker has magnificent moments, especially in his use of the actual backgrounds and interiors.”

If the miraculous were to occur, however, I would hope such a book would be graphically and typographically innovative in ways not dissimilar to those first explored in magazines like Cinema, Twen, Nova, Queen, The Face and i-D.

As to why and how, those are subjects for another article here sometime soon.

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