Tikkun Magazine
2008 Submission Guidelines for Artists
Tikkun needs a variety of types of images to illustrate articles in the magazine. These include but are not limited to political cartoons, photographs, illustrations, and religious/spiritual imagery. The best guideline for submissions is to check out the magazine and the current way we are using art. We now have both color and b&w pages. Below are some examples of current art we have used. 1) GENERIC IMAGES not commissioned by us for a specific article. The articles in Tikkun cover a wide range of topics, but certain themes run throughout: compassion; the ability to connect heart-to-heart with others in many different situations; the ways that greed, fear, insecurity, and hatred corrupt politics, relationships, and institutions; how to hear and connect with each other and appreciate our interdependence with other people and all living beings. In short, Tikkun addresses the selfishness and materialism in Western societies and the alienation and loneliness and oppression that it creates, and seeks to create alternatives, like hope, worship, joy, interdependence, community, generosity, love, reconciliation, repentance, atonement, celebration, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. We are looking for generic images that cover one or more of these topics in a way that will move our readers. Positive Generic Images: Some recent examples used in or considered for Tikkun: a) Seeing a person as sacred b) seeing sex as holy
c) “Heart-centered realism”
Negative Generic Images: d) Torture victim e) Clash of religions
Images can also be more content-specific than those above: Apply our general criteria to issues in health care, the environment, families, childcare, education, the stage we are at in the Iraq war, etc. One of our favorite (negative) images of education was a drawing showing a despondent child sitting at a school desk, overshadowed by a much higher school desk next to him. It evoked the idea that whatever we learn at school, most of us learn that we are intellectually inferior. Or take a photo of an event that has general significance.
More topical ideas: the money-driven and/or adversarial nature of our health care, legal, and educational institutions and the struggles to change them; Israel/Palestine, the suffering in Darfur, the exploitation of the third world by multinational corporations, the suffering of people within those corporations who are well off financially but who are ethically impoverished, the conflict between those in the developing world who are benefiting from the globalization of capital and those who are suffering from it, the restrictions on human rights and civil liberties being generated by our new Supreme Court and by the Bush Administration, the ethical timidity of political leaders and various candidates for president, the drug industry and its perversions, the New Bottom Line, the themes that emerge from the Spiritual Covenant with America and our Global Marshall Plan (see www.tikkun.org), the hostility of the Left toward ordinary Americans, the hostility of many secularists toward anyone spiritual or religious (including spiritual progressives), the distortions of religion by the Religious Right, the despair of Jesus and Moses and Buddha and Mohammed about what has happened to the religions created in their names, the hunger for love and for mutual recognition, the pleasures of life despite all the perversions in the contemporary world, the misuse of science to serve corporate ends, the wonder of science as it helps advance human understanding, the miracle of creation, the joys and sometimes the heartaches of family life, the relationships between children and parents, the collaboration of professionals with the military or with the corporate power structure, the subordination of the media to the needs of the powerful, etc. 2) TIKKUN-COMMISSIONED IMAGES for specific articles. We are looking for people who are interested in working with us on short notice and on spec to illustrate specific articles. We need artists with a readiness to brainstorm ideas, do a sketch for our approval, accept feedback, and modify the image until it fits our needs. Below is work by three artists, all of whom have appeared in recent issues of Tikkun and who have successfully been working with us in this manner. “Short notice” can mean only a week or two, and more frequently means a day or two. “On spec” means we can’t afford to pay for images we don’t actually use: we may not like the image you come up with or we may like it but not be able to run that article for other reasons (i.e. it gets bumped by a more topical or better article). We are looking for flexible, helpful people who create great images and who can work under the conditions outlined above. Recent examples of commissioned images: a) The tree at Jena by Sabiha Basrai b) Designer children by David Bygott
c) Pelosi and Reid’s feebleness by Todd Tuttle
PAYMENT: While our budget is small, Tikkun is a great venue for exposure. Many up-and-coming artists got their start publishing their work in Tikkun. None of our writers get paid for writing for us. If you are a successful artist who can contribute work to our cause, or if you have a day job and need the exposure to get started as a freelancer, or if you can give us a cut rate—fantastic. Otherwise rates are determined on a case-by-case basis according to our limited budget. PLEASE SEND US YOUR WORK ONLY IF IT MATCHES THE CRITERIA ABOVE: That is, it fits the generic images request. Email your work to Tikkun Assistant Editor, Adina Allen at magazine@tikkun.org.