The BFA Photography Department recently released Issue 12 of its award-winning tri-annual magazine Dear Dave,. Under the guidance of editor-in-chief Stephen Frailey (chair of the BFA Photography Department and co-chair of the MPS Fashion Photography Department) the new issue celebrates a community of talented visual thinkers and highlights outstanding original work.

For this issue, a group of photographers were commissioned to portray BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member and legendary artist Billy Sullivan (BFA 1968 Fine Arts). The photographers, which include BFA Photography Department faculty member Oliver Wasow, MFA Photography Department faculty member Elinor Carucci, Barclay Hughes (BFA 2010 Photography), Devin Yalkin (BFA 2010 Photography) and Chuck Close, explore a diversity of approaches and aesthetic sensibilities while portraying Sullivan as a supporting character in their narratives.

Dear Dave, gives critical context for featured photography through short essays, and Issue 12 includes pieces authored by two BFA Photography faculty members. Lyle Rexer’s article on David LaChapelle’s 1996 portrait of rapper Tupac Shakur “When He Was A Slave” examines the ways pictures talk to each other through time and how the present recreates the past. Fellow faculty member Seth Greenwald’s essay contextualizes images by Asger Carlsen into a prism of social satire and cultural production that challenges the conventions of taste.

Issue 12 also highlights images by BFA Photography Department alumni Rachel Sussman (1998) and Joshua Citarella (2010). Sussman takes on remote locations in her landscape portrait to broach the sublime and rearrange human proportions. Citarella’s photography combines a variety of media to engage the language of rudimentary still lifes as well as the human body while exercising photographic technique.

Dear Dave, magazine can be purchased at select bookstores and newsstands; online subscriptions include a free copy of the current issue in addition to the next three.