THEO JOURNAL Vol. 1

THEO JOURNAL Vol. 1 is the inaugural issue of a fashion photography ZINE created by Tokyo-based photographer and painter TISCH.

Each issue centers on a single fashion model and takes the relationship between seeing and being seen as its point of departure, exploring the dignity of the subject and the conditions through which beauty comes into being. Fashion models are perhaps the people whose profession is most purely defined by being seen, while at the same time carrying the historical legacy of the Male Gaze within feminist discourse. Through this series, TISCH quietly questions the structures of the gaze and the relations of power embedded in the production of beauty.

Drawing on Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt, the journal brings together perspectives from ecology, phenomenology, aesthetics, and feminism to explore new possibilities for fashion photography. At the same time, it reconsiders some of the questions contemporary aesthetics continues to confront whenever it speaks of beauty and the gaze.

Just as Maurice Merleau-Ponty turned to Cézanne and Gilles Deleuze to Francis Bacon, philosophy and art have long been close companions. THEO JOURNAL seeks to bring contemporary aesthetics into dialogue with fashion photography—two fields that have rarely spoken to one another. By allowing these unfamiliar languages to intersect, it searches for new ways beyond the conceptual impasses of each. In this sense, THEO JOURNAL is a space for dialogue and experimentation, a platform that grows together with the artists, thinkers, and audiences who choose to take part.

Size: 406x273 mm

Pages: 24 pages

Printing: color

Year of publication: 2026