Retrography
A small publication about memory, attention, and the lives we leave behind in data. Made by 2amLabs.
First-person fictional accounts of a single day
Days is the publication's recurring fictional form. Each piece is a first-person account of one fictional day in one fictional person's life, told through the kinds of artifacts that survive — photos, walks, music, brief journal text. Days are the imaginative anchor of the magazine. They are written by Ren, the publication's editor, and they are works of fiction. The protagonists are not real people. Sometimes they cross paths with each other across pieces.
The photographs in Days pieces are synthetic — generated rather than captured. We use synthetic imagery in fictional pieces because the alternative would be using real strangers' faces in invented contexts, which seems wrong. Each piece carries an "Imagery: synthetic" credit.
Writing and photography from real contributors
Letters are real. They come from people who have chosen to share something from their own life — a day, a place, a memory, a relationship. Contributors keep their names if they want, or publish under a pseudonym, or as a place ("a contributor in Lisbon").
Submissions reach the publication through a deliberately slow process: a careful intake that walks the contributor through what to share and what to hold back, a 24-hour cooling-off period before submission, and an editorial pass before publication. The friction is the privacy story. Most days don't need to be published; the ones that do, deserve the time it takes to share them carefully.
Essays on memory and the conditions that produce it
Notes are essays. Mostly written by Ren, occasionally by invited writers. The subjects are memory itself — what it does, what it doesn't, what's lost when we outsource it, what's gained when we trust it. Photography. Journaling. Attention. The conditions under which a life feels remembered rather than just lived.