“You’ve been my magazine since I could tie my shoes,” the e-mail read. “So I have to ask, what are you trying to be now?”
The e-mail was in response to our October 2009 cover, a beautiful night pipe shot of Tanner Hall, lit up with strobes and green gel by photographer Eric Seo. Unexpectedly, it became one of our most contentious covers in recent history, hailed in some circles as our best ever, and rued in others as a sure sign the world was about to evaporate.
It is startling to me that the cover of a ski magazine could still spur such debate. Even more so that there is still such a debate in 2010—with our sport so evolved and our world with so many more pressing issues—over what constitutes “real” skiing, and in turn a legitimate cover to POWDER.
The answer to both those questions was clear for everyone who attended The Gathering at Red Mountain in April. The Gathering is a collection of some of our most esteemed photographers giving presentations over two nights, and skiing hard together during the day. And though everyone there is a “ski” photographer, the most remarkable aspect of the event is how different the various presentations are. From Marko Shapiro’s shots of Lebanese snow stained with Sahara sand to Christian Pondella’s icy mountaineering shots to Seo’s depictions of skiers jibbing dump trucks and concrete structures to everything in between, each presentation had a unique look at what our sport is.
That, in a nutshell, is what POWDER brings to our readers every month. POWDER is not a magazine for fathers, or for sons, we are the magazine parents and children pass back and forth. We are not a backcountry magazine or a park ’zine or a racing journal or a mountaineering log or an alpine or telemark title. POWDER is a ski magazine, which could mean anyone of those things on any given day, and something totally different the next. In short, we don’t harp on what makes us different, but rather portray the beauty—through compelling written and visual stories—of the passion we all share. – Derek Taylor
