Posted on Monday, July 28th, 2014 by Will Hagle
Daylight is the online component of Daylight Books, a publishing company dedicated to creating compelling photography books.
The online equivalent of Daylight is similarly dedicated to publishing great images, although there’s an increased focus on digital art. Each collection of photographs is organized on a single, scrollable page that makes great use of the web as a publishing platform. The photographs in each collection — called “Editions” of Daylight — are accompanied by text that ranges from essays to interviews. The premise is that all of the words hosted on the site are inspired by the accompanying art. The images themselves are also easily sharable via social media platforms, enhancing the overall interactive experience of the site. It’s essentially a digital magazine, but designed to fit the web rather than to mimic magazines published in a more traditional manner.
Each “Edition” of Daylight offers a unique set of photographs that explores a particular theme. David Graham’s “Thirty-Five Years / 35 Pictures,” for instance, includes three decades of that photographer’s work. There’s also an interesting and informative interview with the artist conducted by W.M. Hunt. There are more great collections hosted on Daylight, such as Alec Soth’s powerful Orlando. That collection includes black and white photographs of the Florida city, depicting homelessness and other forms of financial struggle outside the gates of the lavish Walt Disney World. Although the collections are the most compelling way to browse Daylight, you can also explore “themes,” such as “family,” “wanderlust,” and other words organized via hashtag. These tags link with Twitter to display photographs from around the world, all based on the same theme. For those interested in how art can transition to the digital space, Daylight is one of the best publications I’ve seen thus far.
