Gong!'s second issue is devoted to stylist and occasional photographer Rosa Codina. Rosa decided to devote the issue to her daughter and everything around her, in a project she entitled Autour de Alia and which she decided to base on monographic content rather than time or technique.
The publication covers several years in the life of Alia, from child to teenager, and at the same time subtly shows the relationship of Rosa with photography through the combination of images created by many of the analogic and digital cameras that she has used throughout time. The editorial narrative, decided by the author herself after a meditation of several months, opts for an abstract and instinctive discourse, based on rhythmic and chromatic perceptions.
The interview for this issue was made by playwright Roger Bernat, and the portrait was taken by Daniel Riera, both close friends of Rosa.
This is the introduction that Roger Bernat writes of Rosa Codina:
“If there is something that the world of fashion, childhood and the underclass have in common is the large amount of dead hours one has to endure and that end up becoming a way of life, spiced up by drugs, sugar and melancholy.
Rosa Codina, stylist first and photographer secondly, translates the look of the fashion photographer to all those other worlds, childhood, poverty, in which the model's listlessness becomes a form of resistance. Before a world continually demanding action and results, Rosa Codina's photography gives back images in which its main characters, people or landscapes, seem to have been left suspended, alien to reality, disconnected.
It is not by chance that, in this selection of photographs that portray the life of Alia and her surroundings, one of the recurring topics is silence. Against someone asking you questions, against someone trying to photograph you, the greatest form of resistance is not to answer, not to strike a pose. There is where the strength of the photography of Rosa Codina resides: she is able to ask questions not expecting any answers.”
Gong! is a periodical monograph. Each issue is exclusively devoted to a single artist who is given 48 pages, plus cover, to do whatever s/he wants, with the least possible interference from Terranova. On a separate identical in format 1-colour insert we include a thorough interview of the artist with an overview of her/his career and an explanation of the motivations that lead them to do what they did with the issue of the magazine. The magazine's masthead included on the insert changes with every new issue and is also designed by the artist.
Rosa Codina (born 1965 in Lleida, Spain, lives and works in Barcelona) studied History of Art and started as stylist for music videos in the nineties, with a group of friends who were also starting as directors. She became stylist for film and advertising and contributor for an endless list of fanzines, magazines and publications. She started taking pictures after buying a Polaroid land camera. Working as stylist for David Dunan, he recommended to try a compact Olympus camera, which became Rosa's favorite shooting machine. The vast majority of her photos are of children, elderly people and trees.
