The German word Auslöser means both "trigger" and "shutter release" — the physical mechanism that creates a photograph. It is the moment of decision, the instant when a photographer commits to capturing this particular slice of reality rather than the one before or after it. Naming a photography magazine after that gesture is a statement of editorial intent: this is a publication interested not just in images but in the act of making them, the decisions behind them, and the way of seeing that produces them.
Auslöser is an independent photography magazine that focuses on emerging and independent photographers whose work pushes the medium in new directions. The publication combines portfolios, interviews, and essays with a design sensibility that gives images room to breathe. But what distinguishes it from the crowded field of photography publications is its interest in process. The conversations are candid and specific, offering readers a window into how photographers think, how they work, and how they arrive at the images that define their practice. These are not the polished talking points of artists on a press tour. They are the working notes of people in the middle of figuring something out.
There is something fitting about a photography magazine grounded in the physical act of taking a picture. It connects the publication to the tactile reality of the medium — the mechanical gesture that precedes every image, no matter how conceptual or digital the work that follows. In an era when photography has become so ubiquitous that the act of taking a picture feels almost passive, Auslöser insists that it is not. Every photograph begins with a moment of attention and a deliberate choice to act, and the magazine exists to honour both the attention and the choice.
The title is a promise that each issue keeps: every page begins with a trigger, a moment of decision, an act of seeing that transforms the ordinary into something worth looking at. For photographers and lovers of photography alike, Auslöser is a reminder that the most important part of any image is the instant just before it exists.