Fiftieth Issue Special

When we sat down nine years ago to make issue one of this magazine, we didn’t know an awful lot. We had a good idea of who we were – as much as anyone does when they’re first starting out – but most of all we just had a load of questions. The world, in our eyes, was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle – layers of lives that interlock and intertwine and then go off in a million different directions. And if you wanted to understand how it all pieced together, all you had to do was ask.

So that’s what we did. We started meeting people – and sought out more people we wanted to meet – and asked all the questions as they came into our heads. About everything. About where they had been and what they had seen; about what they had done and what they still had left to do; about every little thing that makes them who they are – that pushes them to stray from the pack. And once we’d asked a load of questions, and taken it all in, we realised we still didn’t have any answers. What we had, in abundance, were stories.

Stories mean the world to us. They are the only reason we are here. Stories bring a sense of order when all the lines of our lives feel blurred. Huck, for us, has always been an excuse to jump momentarily into someone else’s life, to flick through someone else’s book of inspirations, to feel for a second the contours of their past, and walk away with a few notes of our own. Every person that has ever featured in these pages leaves a little something behind, a lesson learned, a new route to independence, a perspective we may otherwise have never seen. And the more time we spend listening, and looking for stories, the more we realise there’s still so much left to learn.

But if there’s one thing we have learned over all these years it’s that stories are absolutely everywhere. They’re happening all the time. They live in every person that you will ever meet. All you have to do is ask.

Join us as we celebrate our fiftieth issue by dipping into fifty more lives (and a couple extra thrown in for good measure). Here’s hoping we get to make another fifty issues. And then a few more after that.

Featuring:

Douglas Coupland on how sending the right message to the right person can change the course of your life.

Martin Parr on taking bad photos in order to get good.

Neko Case on why independence is a privilege that should be protected at all costs.

Thurston Moore on how creating a physical calling card is more important now than ever.

John Baldessari on why you have to destroy the past to ask new questions of the future.

Amy Goodman on why fighting for a better future is about fighting every day.

And:

Tune-Yards
Alfred Bobe Jr
Andy Gill & Anton Corbijn
Easkey Britton
Sideburn Magazine
Eli Morgan Gesner
Toro Y Moi
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Ozier Muhammad
Alison Mosshart
Lee Scratch Perry
Sharmadean Reid
Bruce Pavitt
Eskil Vogt
Max Porter
Nick Waplington
High Maintenance
Will Butler
Banquet Records
John Vanderslice
Laura Trott
Kazuo Ishiguro
Mr Bingo
Stephanie Foo
Brother Ali
Kassia Meador
Russell Brand
Maziar Bahari & Jon Stewart
Nell Zink
Atmosphere
Eman Mohammed
Iris Skateboards
Strike!
Spot
Adam Granduciel
Joe Sib
Ricky Powell
Deborah Coughlin
Arooj Aftab
Lee Quinones
Michaela Angela Davis
The Smarteez
Twin Shadow
Thomas Morris

Plus:

How To Make It On Your Own: A handbook for inspired doers
Free with every issue of Huck 50, and featuring advice from creative entrepreneurs around the globe.

Subscribe today to make sure you don’t miss another issue this year. Buy the Fiftieth Issue Special in the Huck Shop now.