Until now, our part-time Berliner Flo always had to get me my long craved for magazines from the incredibly well stocked magazine store do you read me?!. But a few weeks ago I finally managed to go there myself and get a nice bunch of magazines myself. One of them was Teller, a magazine of stories, as it’s called. The editors understand a story to be told either photographic, poetic, in prose or classically journalistic.

At this point I have to mention how dissappointed I am by other indie-magazines (CIRCUS is a bookazine, as we all know): they all should be able to tell a good story, but few of them actually do. Instead there either is a confusing arrangement of little facts and beautiful pictures – or boring stories are told over many pages, which suit the author but put the reader to sleep. Equally intelligent as funny stories – that’s something not many accomplish.

Here comes Teller: It’s a rich plate of reading material, full of short and long stories, funny at many times. It’s never superficial and diggs deaper than the usual „we are such inspired and creative minds“-stuff other publishers put out there. In Teller the art just happens, and is created in respect to content, not for making the magazine look like more than it is. I especially enjoyed „The best story I ever heard at a party“ by Crispin Dowler – because it sounds like an „urban legend“ but is too strange to be fake. And of course the text-photo-series by Nina Mangalanayagam, who takes the reader with her on a tamil family meeting.

You must have noticed by now: I love this magazine. That’s why I was especially pleased to find out that there is going to be a second issue soon. But the team needs the help of the readers. The Berlin based editor Ruby Russel and her colleagues startet a project on Kickstarter; just as CIRCUS did. There they offer some nice rewards – original prints from a photo series in issue #1, to just name one.

And since I am so hooked I thouht I should find out a little bit more. That’s why I asked Ruby some questions about the production, what she has planned for issue #3 and were she positions the magazine between journalism and narration.

Teller was published by Trolley Books. How did this collaboration work?
Trolley publish mainly art and photography books and are probably best known for important books of photojournalism. Trolley‘s ethos fits extremely well with Teller’s in that they focus on telling stories that need to be told, rather than a project’s commercial potential. Working with Trolley has allowed us to get Teller out to a much wider audience and benefit from their experience and recognition. 

The production was split between London and Berlin. How did you organize work with the guys from “Neue Gestaltung”?
From our first meeting with “Neue Gestaltung” we (myself and co-editor Katherine Hunt) realised they would play a major role in developing the whole concept of the magazine. I am based in Berlin and Katherine is based in London but comes over fairly frequently. When we can’t all meet together Katherine joins us over skype. Working with NG has been a wonderful experience and an education for us, and we consider Anna Bühler and Pit Stenkhoff (the team of NG, editor’s note) very much as equal partners in the Teller team.

How did you select the stories for issue #1? Were it pieces your friends already had written?
Some were friends, some were people we approached because we liked their work, some were strange things we stumbled across. We are extremely grateful to everyone who took a chance on the first issue of a new publication and made it something we’re really proud of.

It seems like you already have created issue #2. How fast will it be produced – if the full amount is pledged?
The layout is nearly there. The finished magazine should be in the shops by the end of May. We’re really excited about Kickstarter – we think it’s a great way to get independent projects off the ground and we are feeling pretty hopeful about reaching out target! Getting people to order their copy of the magazine in advance means we can put the full cover price towards production costs, and our contributors have been extremely generous in donating signed books and prints for larger rewards.

And do you even have things in mind for issue #3 already?
Very much so. We have several stories either confirmed or under consideration and are building up a bank of material – either completed stories that we are waiting for the moment to publish, or works in progress that we are following closely. Because we publish such a mix of stuff, there are some stories we have been given which are brilliant but which we couldn’t use yet because we haven’t found the right context for them in terms of the other material in an issue.

Do you have an alternative plan to Kickstarter?
We do have a few ideas up our sleeve … nothing confirmed yet.

Did you originally plan Teller #1 to be a profitable publication? 
No, not at all. Our first aim was to get the magazine out one way or another. The second is to make it pay for its own production. Once we achieve that we’ll start thinking about how to generate a bit of pocket money for ourselves and our contributors. As for turning a profit… we’re not even thinking about that yet.

Would Teller eventually be funded through advertising?
We’re not ruling it out completely. We don’t really want to get into selling advertising space, but we are exploring the idea of working with a limited number of regular sponsors.

Do you have a favorite story in issue #1?
That’s really impossible. But if I had to pick something, Charles Trotter’s images of Kenya in the 1950s are absolutely wonderful and it was really exciting to discover and publish such important work that had been seen by very few people.

Your stories aren’t officially categorized but the fit together very well. Is there a theme behind issue #1 like you plan with issue #2?
There was no theme for issue #1. Everything was about defining the kind of work we wanted to publish, trying to find the right tone and variety and making a diverse set of stories work together as a coherent whole.

Already in issue #1 there are a few stories starring animals. Do you or your co-editor have an especially strong interest in animals?
There’s a stupid cliche about needing animals in a story to create human interest, and we came across so many weird and wonderful stories involving animals that we decided to dedicate part of the second issue to them. Hopefully we will have got the animals thing out our system in time for issue #3!

Do you think, the content of Teller is journalism or prose? Or both?
Some of the stories we publish can be categorised as traditional journalism, others straight prose, some are purely visual – told in photographs, drawings or other media. But we are also really interested in the point where these categories blur – fiction based on true stories, stories that use the conventions of journalism to create works of fiction and stories that play with unusual ways of combining words and images.

Can you tell us something about how your own piece in issue #1 was done – the story about the old Augustine, who as an adult lived like a child with his mother and never went to school?
I met Augustine through a participatory arts project that was I running with photographer Kyna Gourley. We sat with him and listened to his stories for hours, met up with him many times and new details would emerge through his own inexplicable thought processes. And then I just wrote up what he told us and edited it down to the key points of the narrative. It’s all Augustine’s own words though, and I tried to keep his voice, because he’s such an amazing personality.