Ryan McGinley Turns Der Eigene Issue Five Into a Collective Portrait

McGinley's cast is unusually specific for brand publishing: Bobby Brown, Charles Caesar, Ross Collab, Max Donahue, Ceyenne Doroshow, Tevin Evans, Marc Hundley, Terence Ingram and Tasheem Ingram-Dantzler, Jari Jones, Adarni Karina, Simone Niamani, Luisa Opalesky, Stuart Perkins, Ash Rucker and Maxwell Vice. Formal portraits sit beside instant photographs and personal writing, shifting authority away from the campaign photographer alone.

That editorial choice matters. McGinley has photographed queer youth and chosen communities for decades, yet issue five is strongest when the subjects' own words interrupt any easy idea of a single New York scene. The foreword establishes his point of view; the fifteen entries prevent the publication from becoming a celebrity photographer's souvenir of Pride month.

• Fifteen contributor entries combine photographs with first-person writing
• Terence Ingram and Tasheem Ingram-Dantzler appear as a paired contribution

Adolf Brand launched Der Eigene in Berlin in 1896. Archival institutions describe it as the first periodical openly directed to homosexual readers, although its early politics, language and male-centred worldview belong to a very different historical movement. Brand published it until 1932; Nazi persecution and confiscation ended the conditions under which it could continue.

RIMOWA's series began ninety years later, in 2022. Calling it a revival is reasonable as a statement of inspiration, but it should never collapse the two publications into one continuous institution. The modern issues are commissioned cultural projects from a luxury company; the original was a precarious political, literary and artistic enterprise produced under criminalisation.

• Original run: Berlin, 1896–1932, published by Adolf Brand
• RIMOWA's separately commissioned series began in 2022

Five hundred complimentary copies were announced from 26 June 2026 at Andreas Murkudis in Berlin, BookMarc in New York, Climax Books in London and Yvon Lambert in Paris. That tiny distribution makes the physical issue difficult to encounter, but it should not become a resale story. The names and texts inside are more consequential than the edition count.

Our verdict: issue five is worth covering because it gives a commercial Pride project an authored, multivocal form. Its weakness is access. A project invoking an important queer publishing history would gain cultural value from a durable digital edition or institutional deposit, not merely from becoming a rare object on four design-book counters.

• Original distribution: four shops across four cities
• Editorial weakness: the 500-copy limit restricts access to the contributors' work