There appears to be a category of publication that always ends up flying under most people’s radar, for reasons that I don’t find that obvious. If people buy the Sunday edition of the New York Times for the magazine, why is The New York Review of Books not more well known? Sure, they have less photography, but they easily give the Times’ magazine a run for the money as far as quality and scope of the articles is concerned. Likewise, there is Granta Magazine, which actually looks more like a little book, more literary in form, and whose magazines are each devoted to a single topic. And then there’s dispatches, which resembles Granta Magazine in form, but its design looks more modern, and it has more photography.

The most recent edition of dispatches is centered on Russia, which has been developing into something that is very hard to understand. Apart from a series of excellent articles, there are two large photography sections in “on russia”, one a series of photos by Seamus Murphy, the other one a historical selection of portrait photography curated by Olga Korsunova, Nadya Sheremetova, and Yuri Kozyrev. For the latter alone “on russia” is worth the money, and there are quite a few articles that you probably want to read if you want to get an idea about what is going on in Russia. So check it out!