If you’re lamenting the demise of the lads’ mag, but at the same time realise you’re a bit too grown up for that sort of thing now anyway, we might have just what you are looking for. TALC is something of a throwback in that it seeks to reconnect strong editorial with erotic photography in a way that publications such as Playboy and Lui once did, but at the same time bringing the whole thing out of the darkness of the shoebox under the bed and into the light.
This is not porn, or if it is, it’s a new porn, design porn; there may be as much visual interest in the sofa on which a model is lying as her nude body itself. Indeed, the first issue features an interview with Leonard Koren, founder of niche “gourmet bathing” magazine WET, who speaks of his detestation of the re-definition of “porn” as I have just used it (sorry Leonard, you’re probably right). TALC is all about visual literacy, says founder and creative director Edward Vince, and points to the launch of his magazine on the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign as an indicator of both a gap in the market and a desire to have it filled.
