Hamburger Eyes

Ray Potes is one of the founding fathers of Hamburger Eyes, a magazine and more.

And when we say "more," we mean a publishing house, art gallery, zine collective, clothing company, and, and and...




Chief Magazine: Tell me about when you first opened. You started in 2001 in San Diego. Why did you decide to relocate to San Francisco? How was it moving the entire business?

Ray Potes: Actually at that point, there was no business. I made the first issue there. Maybe 30 copies, Xeroxed, and stapled. Right after that I lived in Honolulu for almost two years and then I moved to SF because I had a lot friends and family here and there was interest in the zine.  

I was noticing that your shows and reviews in other magazines didn’t really happen until a couple  of years in. What was going on in those first few years? (Aside from just trying to get your shit out there.)

Nothing really. We were just goofing off. Sooner or later people started inviting us to hang photos or whatever and then we started getting advertising and now all of a sudden our audience is getting bigger.

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What came first: Burgerworld--the publishing company that Hamburger Eyes is published through--or Hamburger Eyes?

Hamburger Eyes came first. We had no idea what we’re doing. The time came when we had to register as a business and Burgerworld Media is what happened. I worked at Transworld Media for four years, so it’s kind of a take on that.

Your last issue was an all music theme. With such a broad undertaking as the world of photography can be, how else in the past have you categorized or tried to shape each issue?

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Nowadays I think Hamburger Eyes itself is becoming sort of a theme. The early issues were real loose (studio, polaroids, contact sheets etc.) and today it seems tighter in the editing (almost all documentary and street). As for the music issue, so many people were sitting on bangers, it had to be done.  

What magazines do you look at right now for inspiration… not necessarily specifically for photography… what are you reading?

Actually, I still love to collect photo mags. Not as nutty about it as I used to be, but I still get old beat up second hand ones, new ones, foreign ones, and any zines.

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You feature/publish numerous zines along with everything else… is that a curatorial process?  Are these side-projects of coworkers and peers…?

I can’t pay any of the photographers in cash. So I do what I can to promote their photography or whatever they got going on.

What’s the difference between a magazine and a zine?

Not sure the official status of the word, but I think once you start getting ads you’re a magazine.

Do you have any thoughts on expanding into publishing other art forms?

Yeah, sooner or later I’d still like to put out a DVD. I tried to last year. It’s not as easy as you would think.

Since you have so much time between issues, what kind of process do you go through with each issue? How long do you spend looking at submissions? Do you mostly go after photographer’s work that you like or are you surprised by a lot of great submissions from relatively unknown photographers?

Actually, if money wasn’t a thing, I think I could put out four or more magazines a year. It’s crazy that people think we chose to wait a year to put out our recent issue. In between issues we are working other jobs, freelancing, painting houses - whatever we can do to make ends. Whatever is left over goes into the mag. Sometimes there are no leftovers, so no mag.  

As far as editing goes, it’s a little of both. I have a gang of photographers I like to call upon but we do always come across amazing work through submissions. Which is probably the best part of all this, that is meeting other photographers.

You just opened a new part of your company with the Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter. That offers magazine production, darkrooms, workshops, not to mention a retail side. That’s incredible. What has enabled you to be able to expand like that?

We were In the right place, right time, right state of mind. It was called Colorats Photographics, a darkroom rental place we already hung out at all the time. As with all the regular labs In the city, the digital takeover and business was slow. We moved Hamburger Eyes in to help out and eventually it became Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter. The place is huge so we made room for a digi lab, a gallery, and a retail area to help pay rent.

Uri Korn is teaching a class in color management for printing for publication and you also have a very open door attitude for people that want to come work for you. It seems like with all the services and classes you’re taking a very proactive and responsible stand towards the community that you work and thrive in… insomuch that you’re really trying to be there for the people that are interested in doing sort of the same thing you and yours are doing. I think it's really important to make sure that you give back to your peers or to the people that look up to you, because in the long term, it just makes for a more rich environment to grow in yourself.

Is that something you're conscious of or is it that you feel as if the work your producing (the journal specifically) dictates that very open attitude?

The SF photo community has a huge history of "community." One of the reasons I moved here was because it was only natural for me to participate. Everyone here helps each other out, and I know how hard it is getting your work out there and staying productive, so It’s awesome to be able to provide a place to work.   

You're also a working photographer and filmmaker. How do you balance everything?

I don’t. At all. I'm constantly blowing it  and confusing the shit out of everyone around me.

How do you fund your magazine? Why did you choose to have it be a tangible thing as opposed to being available on the web? Why don't you put the issues on the web? It seems as if you treat this journal as a place for people to submit and have their own place to show their work, but with its limitations (unavailable even to view on the web, limited printing, etc), on the whole it's more your personal art piece. Do you feel that’s correct? If you had to choose, do you feel more like a curator or an artist?

This is a good question because, I think I mentioned it earlier, most of the major decisions over here are dictated by money. We fund our magazine by retail sales and advertising and other part time jobs. Sometimes it's not enough and we have to push deadlines back, lower our circulation, cut pages or whatever. Normal everyday publishing issues.

If we could have 100,000 magazines in circulation, then we probably would. It might come off as a limited editon art piece because we sell out of small amounts. But we didn't set out to do that, we don’t number them or anything and it's pretty much a different circulation everytime (we average 3000 copies per issue). But then it comes back to selling advertising and none of us really know what we’re doing and writing a media kit has taken us five years and counting. And do we even want a big corporate ad on the back cover? So I don’t know, there's stuff we have to think about.  

As far the web goes, personally I like to make photos. For a long time I printed only 5x7 so that I could Xerox them easily. That was zine making, pre-computers. I like holding stuff. And monitors are so finicky, which is why we don’t publish the magazine online.

If I had to choose between curator or artist, I would say producer or publisher. I work with so many different people on so many different levels that I can't take full credit for any one aspect. But that’s what's fun about it.

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Speaking of curating, congrats on the gallery space. What plans do you have for it in the future?

We are starting to show other art, not just photography. My friend Chris Fitzpatrick curated our next show, which has video stuff, installation stuff and super sick giant telescope astral photography stuff..

You’re starting to put out videos. How are the mediums different to you?  Do you plan on ever curating a film festival or anything like that?

It's different but not that different, for me anyways. As a magazine editor, I'm taking existing photos and putting them together in a sequence. Not much different than editing a film together. Which Is why I like it I think. But as a shooter versus director, it's much different obviously. Which is something I'm getting used to, and not easily.  

I've hosted a couple film nights at the local indie theater with some friends, but that’s about it so far. I realize my taste in short films is way too specific to be able to do with it what I do with photography as far as getting peeps together. That doesn’t discourage me, but it’s gonna be awhile..

You mentioned that you looked at Life and National Geographic a lot and modeled Hamburger Eyes after that. Do you still look to those? What else is out there that inspires you? Do you at all try to limit yourself from looking too much at what other publishers are doing in order to not color what is your mag?

It's weird because as a photographer and fan of photography, I'm constantly looking at stuff, seeing what's happening, etc. But as an editor and an art director, I don’t want to look at anything, I only want to recall from memory the wonderment of magazines like National Geographic for motivation. Yes, I'm going nuts.

What have been your biggest challenges in this industry? Any disasters or great learning experiences from flying blind stories?? (actually sidenote: were you flying blind? What were you doing before the mag? Anything that really prepared you, or conversely, didn’t at all prepare you for this business?)

Definitly flying blind. Still flying blind. Every now and then we hop on someone's back who's got a parachute like that scene in Point Break.

The funny thing about it all is when I started sending my photos out, I couldn’t pay any magazine to run them. I used to get super bummed. But now as a photo editor and friend of other photo editors, I can see that it's almost not about the photos. If I can give any advice or if I learned anything, its about consistency.





Website
www.burgerworldchronicles.com


 

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