Where the Leaves Fall #4

The themes for this issue focus on mutualism, interconnectedness, and pandemic, alongside a series of dialogues.

A MUTUAL FEELING

The issue opens with a look at how our lives are inextricably entangled with the lives of other species, and the way that artists and creatives are attempting to recognise this. We examine the legacy of George Washington Carver, the black son of a slave owner, whose insights into soil preservation and crop diversification in 19^th century America preempted the concerns of modern regenerative agriculture. And Brazilian chef and author Bela Gil argues that agroecology could be the key to ending climate change and food poverty.

OUR ROOTS ENTWINED

We find out how a 16^th century guru living in northern India has inspired ecology lessons in contemporary Dubai, and learn about the tenets of the Bishnoi community who were eco-warriors before the term was invented. Deepti Asthana’s photographic essay explores life for teenage girls in a remote Himalayan village. And Catherine Gilon connects colonial interventions in Nilgiris, southern India, with the current threat to native species and destabilisation of the ecosystem.

A CHANCE TO REFLECT

We examine how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected food security, with an insight into how people are finding local solutions to the collapse of global supply chains, focusing on initiatives in India, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, the US and the UK. And how the gardens in Domiz 1, the oldest and biggest refugee camp in Iraq, have become a symbol of hope to the camp’s 32,000 inhabitants.

DIALOGUES

Writer Maia Nikitina explores the way in which the Russian myth of Baba Yaga has evolved to reflect the country’s changing relationship with nature. Ellen Miles makes the case for nature access as a human right. And Sol Polo is inspired by artist Maria Laet’s work seeking to mend the divide between humankind and the elements.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 136

Atmos Volume 04 – Cascade

Atmos Volume 04: Cascade explores the notion that every action, including inaction, is a choice—and each choice we make has a series of consequences, cascading across time. The choices we make now in regards to the planet will determine the trajectory of the human race for generations to come. Water can conform to its container, or it can gather in force as whelming as a wave. What will you choose?

Features contributions from Rachel Cargle, Maggie Rogers, Dr. Jane Goodall, Ceyenne Doroshow, Ruth H. Hopkins, Nadine Ijewere, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Jamie Margolin, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Ivan McClellan, Sasha Sagan, Daniel Shea, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Leah Thomas, Ben Toms, Danni Washington, Katharine K. Wilkinson, and more.

More or Less – Issue 4

Heavy metal cover star Edie Campbell clad in a onesie of cans by Kezako writes about greenwashing- “You can’t have the conversation and then buy the tshirt. You have to have the conversation and then NOT buy the tshirt.” If there’s one thing we’ve learned in 2020, it’s that we need to curb our overconsumption to save the planet. Now more than ever before, less is more. Welcome to More Or Less 04!

Body and soul: We invited supermodel du jour Paloma Elsesser to creative direct her own cover shoot empowering the female form and the natural beauty of fuller figures. She speaks to fellow model Jess Cole about race and body image in the fashion industry today. “Often, I can’t buy my clothes size. I like to rage against the machine of stereotypes that fatness and brownness occupies, which is what makes fashion in reference to blackness so radical,” she says.

We’re thrilled to announce model Adesuwa Aighewi’s soon-to-launch Legacy, a platform supporting artisans and creative talent in Africa. Money raised will subsidise the artists involved and will also fund social and community projects across the continent. Adesuwa explains “Legacy is proof that sustainability is so much more than just the environment. Sustainability is also support for your local businesses, keeping the money in the community and helping it to thrive”.

One more thing. We fully endorse a Democratic presidency as Donald Trump’s disregard for the environment is catapulting us towards irreversible climate catastrophe. Our 4th cover star Chloë Sevigny says, “The number one goal of this election is to get rid of Donald Trump, and to that end I am wholeheartedly supporting Joe Biden. We cannot have someone leading our country who won’t denounce white supremacy, won’t guarantee LGBTQ rights and a woman’s right to choose and is taking backward steps regarding climate change.” We only have a few more weeks, so get out there and vote!

The themes for this issue focus on extinction, reconnection and redesign, alongside a series of dialogues.

LIVING CLOSE TO THE EDGE

The issue opens with photographer Kazi Md. Jahirul Islam’s extraordinary picture essay on the floods in Bangladesh and the damage that they wreak on everyday life in Chittagong. Aaron Davies looks at efforts to save the world’s wild coffee species, many of which are at risk of extinction. And Anna Souter explores how plants, surviving the worst manmade disasters, can offer an alternative model for living in the face of the environmental crisis.

A TIME TO RECONNECT

Victor Steffenson’s words and Peter McConchie’s photographs create a powerful message for our cover story, which looks at how Indigenous fire management methods could help save Australia and improve the environment. We also hear how conservationists in the UK are using a creative approach to engage people with nature. And our picture story from the Choithram Netralaya eye hospital in Indore reveals how free cataract operations can help India’s poorest regain their sight and their lives.

REDESIGN / RETHINK / REWORK

We examine how community groups and retailers are changing the way we access and engage with food and with each other, from a movement to promote simple plant-based recipes in working class areas of Brazil to the Kitchen Social in north London, UK, which brings the local community together around food and activities. We also talk to designer and author Julia Watson about how traditional Indigenous technologies could be adapted to improve modern cities.

DIALOGUES

Climate activist Ayisha Siddiqa describes how her personal history led her to the climate movement, writer Jonny Keen looks at wildlife on a brownfield site, and journalist Paul F Cockburn explores how we need darkness in our lives.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 128

Nature is a delicate balance of expansion and collapse, flourish and famine, growth and decay. Have human beings permanently disrupted this cycle, throwing the wheel off its axis, or are we just paving way for the next species to thrive? Is it still possible for us to return to a point of flourishing without collapse? Explore these questions with the Extinction Rebellion, the women warriors of the Amazon, and more of our heroes on the frontlines of conservation. Featuring contributions from Sylvia Earle, Elizabeth L. Cline, Ben Toms, Sam Rock, Stefanie Moshammer, Liliana Merizalde, Kristin-Lee Moolman, Gareth McConnell, Pieter Hugo, Simon Armitage, and more. 

In “The Amazon Is a Woman,” Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum paints a clear portrait of how the violence committed against the rainforest is no different than the violence committed against the indigenous peoples who are risking their lives to defend it—the story of the forest is their story. “Rebel Yell” tells the tale of another band of warriors—the members of Extinction Rebellion and their Red Rebel Brigade—who have taken the threat of annihilation and transformed it into a movement of hope, beautifully captured by photographer Ben Toms.

At the heart of the issue are the twenty-first century’s “Stewards of the Wild,” a collection of incredible individuals and organizations on the frontlines of conservation, including diving legend Sylvia Earle, reforestation expert Akira Miyawaki, and Thomas Hildebrandt, the doctor working to save the northern white rhinos from extinction. The last two of these creatures in existence, Fatu and Najin, were lensed by photographer Sam Rock at their home of Ol Pejeta Conservancy, specially for this issue.

The remaining pages include a line of inquiry from The Conscious Closetauthor Elizabeth L. Cline about the future of fashion (“Reaping and Sewing”), a poetic exploration of personal loss by the UK’s poet laureate Simon Armitage (“Hooked Up to the Morphine”), an exploration in space archaeology from the Harvard professor who coined the term (“Is Anybody Out There?”) and lessons from a death expert (“Living Like a Death Doula”). In “Two Futures,” Paris Climate Agreement authors Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac present two potential outcomes for our future, as explored in their new book.

Alongside these stories, Atmos asked nine artists—including Stefanie Moshammer, Gareth McConnell, Kristin-Lee Moolman, Pieter Hugo, and more—to interpret the theme of Flourish/Collapse through their eyes. The result is a journey along the axis of creation that spans from the teeming forests of New Zealand to the snowy expanses of Iceland to the all-but-barren deserts of the Atacama, telling stories that deal with the nature of proliferation and putrescence, abundance and absence, life and death—and the places where these forces meet.

“As a species, limitless growth seems to be all we have valued for so long,” says Atmoseditor-in-chief William Defebaugh. “But nature has limits, limits that we are testing. We have been blindly walking the line between expansion and collapse, and never has it been more clearly illuminated how thin that line is. This year, with the snap of a finger, nature has shown us how quickly she can crumble our kingdom of comfort. At every turn, she teaches us the importance of balance. It is time we finally listened.”

Lissome Magazine Issue N° 1
A Wakening

Alongside visually stunning fashion editorials and photo essays, Lissome Magazine shares narratives that re-imagine our role as humans in an endangered ecosystem, and take us into a new equilibrium with the natural world, imagining gentler, wiser, and more meaningful ways of living. 

In our first edition, we explore the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion’s trailblazing manifesto, take an eco-spiritual perspective on fashion with Ania Zoltkowski, delve into the emotive quality of textiles with BODE NY, and discuss the future of fashion education with Judith ter Haar of ArtEZ. We take to the streets with Extinction Rebellion, create a waste herbarium based on poetry by Stacey Cotter Manière and awaken colour from plants with Still Garments in their natural dye garden in Berlin.

Featuring:
Emily Bode / BODE NY
Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion
Kate Fletcher / Wild Dress
Céline Semaan / Slow Factory
Extinction Rebellion
Eco Visionaries / Royal Academy of Arts
Eco Spirituality / Sustainability 5.0
Becky Burchell & Jonathon Porritt / The World We Made
Agroforestry / Farfarm

Mindfully Made: Lissome Magazine is printed locally in Berlin with Medialis, a FSC® certified printer that is renowned for its high quality and craftsmanship. Lissome Magazine is printed on Enviro Top U, a 100% FSC® recycled paper which is Blauer Engel and EU Ecolabel certified. The overall carbon footprint of our limited edition debut issue of 1000 copies amounts to 2.6 tons of CO2 emissions. To take responsibility for our emissions and to promote a regenerative culture, we donated to the work of the Green Belt Movement and Cool Earth.

Binding: High-quality swiss open binding with thread stitching.

The themes we explored for the second issue of Where the Leaves Fall focused on death, journey and seeds, alongside a number of essays in the dialogues section. 

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

In this section we look at how Ana Mendieta celebrated her own mortality in her work, exploring the cycle of life and death and our connection with nature. Transcending the spiritual and philosophical to the actual, Antonina Savytska’s visceral images of the last months of her aunt’s life paints a stark and honest portrait of our relationship not just with death, but the life that leads us there and the patterns and behaviours of the ancestors that live through us. And we look at how societal conventions around death, developed to make the process as comfortable and acceptable as possible, are being challenged by environmentalists with the aim of ‘greening’ the system.

THROUGH OUR JOURNEY

We begin our exploration of journey (as well as the cover image) with The Flower Laboratory’s reuse of heather flowers leftover from a fashion shoot as art, as communion, as rehabilitation. Then we explore the Russian cultural phenomenon of the dacha, the plot of land and residence beyond the city boundaries where people can escape to nature. With ayahuasca, another way to commune with nature, we question the impact of yagé tourism on Indigenous communities.

LIVING WITH SEEDS

Seeds are a ubiquitous part of our daily lives and in this section we explore different seed interactions – whether it’s searching for endangered flora in Kyrgyzstan, understanding how seeds are used to communicate with ancestors in Zimbabwe, discovering the world’s largest seed in the Seychelles, or exploring the structure and ways seeds disperse through the camera’s lens.

DIALOGUES

Our dialogues offer a range of ideas and different perspectives, including climate change activism in Africa, how death should be celebrated as a part of the food cycle, the water element, bringing climate change to our doorstep, the ecosystems that thrive above our heads, and drawing a garden in motion.

Product Dimensions: 240mm x 170mm

Pages: 128