Photography

Chance is a photography magazine and serialized art book that looks at the world through the lens of theater and design. A calm, noise-free place to engage with the aesthetics of design in detail, Chance integrates all of the arts, material and non-material, into a single space where the poetry of human thought can expand our desire for a more provocative and lifted engagement with design.

The team at Chance produces an original photo shoot of nearly every production they cover, and believe that a more thorough glimpse into the world of design can change the way people think and write about the theater and the artists who create for it. Started in 2012 by a group of designers, writers and artists, Chance is more than a magazine. As a thoroughly stylized and high-quality publication, Chance is an immersive, image-rich, serialized art-book on contemporary events in performance and design that comprehensively redefines the relationship between theater and print.

In Issue 4: Unbound, new spaces mean new ideas, and the reactivation of theatre as a literary contact sport. Chance 4 includes Kathryn Hamilton’s Sister Sylvester; the Comedie-Francaise and Virginie Gervaise; The Chekhov Project at Lake Lucille; Rita Ryack’s Casa Valentina; Tim Etchells’ and Hugo Glendinning’s Empty Stages; James Thompson’s work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Sandrine Philippe’s stage-ready couture; design legend Eugene Lee’s library; the Toneelgroep’s scenographer Jan Versweyveld and video designer Tal Yarden; Hugh Hardy’s new buildings for LCT3 and TFANA; Kristen Robinson’s broken space for Nora; and Jeff Hinchee’s paper theatre kit.

Chance is a photography magazine that looks at the world through the lens of theater and design. We produce and original photo shoot of nearly every production we cover, and believe that superior documentation can change the way we think and write about the theater and the artists who create for it.

A calm, noise free place to engage with the aesthetics of design in detail, Chance integrates all of the arts, material and non material, into a single space where the poetry of human thought can expand our desire for a more provocative and lifted engagement with design.

Our editorial team of 30 artists have worked for more than a year to bring you Chance 3, Couture | Stage, representing the work of the artists in C3 in a manner more pointed, refined and convincing than you may have ever seen them before.

In C3 we traveled to Europe for fresh shoots of the work of Eiko Ishioka and Rudolf Nureyev. We've developed beautiful portfolios on the work of Simon Doonan, Ming Cho Lee and Mark Wendland. More comprehensively, we look at the career of Kenneth Collins of Temporary Distortion, while Charles Renfro gives us fresh insights into DSR's redesign of Lincoln Center. Then we head off the grid, downtown, for performance shoots of Company XIV and The Mad Ones.

Chance is literature over script, high rez over low rez. When the image is about seeing and not selling, the art of photography comes alive. Chance is a revolution in theatrical photography. No other artist is more perfectly poised to undertake an examination of our noisebound culture than those in theater, and no other publication better frames this conversation than Chance.

There’s a lot going on. Chance is looking and listening. Join us.

What happens behind the scenes of a Broadway production? Broadway Revealed showcases photographer Stephen Joseph's sweeping panorama images of studios, designers, and workshops, revealing the process and complexity of creating theater. Directors, set designers, lighting designers, sound designers, costume designers, props artisans, tailors, milliners, wigmakers, and more are depicted alongside their work and workspaces in these stunning color images.

Riveting theatrical designs are depicted alongside insightful and inspired critical commentary in this one-of-a-kind issue from the team at Chance. Exquisite, original photo shoots of fifteen innovative designs serve as the springboard for fifteen inventive essays from leading critics and thinkers. The dialogues between American and European design and between image and text reach new heights in this thoughtful and provocative publication.

With original photo shoots and incisive artistic commentary, Chance Magazine: Issue 6 offers many more glimpses into the work of leading designers of sets, costumes, lighting, video and projection, as well as the work of playwrights, directors, photographers, multi-media artists and other innovative theatrical minds.

Chance Issue 5 covers newly-forged and long-standing theatrical legacies. Among them, this issue examines a year-old Shanghai theater built on a decades-old industrial footprint, the luxurious costumes by Martin Pakledinaz for his last production The Pirate Queen, and a backstage view of showgirls in On the Town. Writers Sharr White and John Logan confer on the joys and frustrations of writing for stage and screen and theater artists. Francisco Clemente and Robert Lepage discuss their views of their own art through found objects and the role of cultural institutions and Buddhist teachings. Current members of The Living Theatre discuss their 2014 visit to Burning Man and their love for founder Judith Malina. An “embedded critic” describes through a dramaturgical lens the evolution of a theater piece by the dance and visual art team zoe | juniper. And Chance introduces a new series exploring artistic rights with essays by two theater practitioners and a graphic exploration of the continuum from design inspiration to design appropriation. All these adventures and others await the reader in Chance Issue 5.