OVER grew out of a decade of frustration. PhotoIreland, the Dublin-based cultural organisation founded by Ángel Luis González, had spent years running festivals, building a public photobook library, operating an art bookshop, and curating residencies. Along the way, the team encountered enough questionable practices — nepotism, favouritism, poor governance, a lack of curatorial renewal — to conclude that the discipline of photography needed a space for genuinely critical public discussion. In July 2020, as part of the PhotoIreland Festival, they launched OVER Journal: a periodical and online platform billing itself as the Critical Journal of Photography and Visual Culture for the 21st century.
The journal is co-edited by Aidan Kelly Murphy, Julia Gelezova, and González, with a peer review panel spanning Australia, Ireland, Spain, India, Ghana, Sweden, China, and New Zealand. Contributors to the first two issues include artists Hoda Afshar, Lewis Bush, Bindi Vora, Kelvin Haizel, and Federica Landi, among others. Submissions are open, ongoing, and free. All contributors receive fees — a principle the editors consider non-negotiable in a field where unpaid exposure is still routinely offered as compensation.
OVER is more than a portfolio magazine. Its editorial focus zooms out to observe the whole scene: what power relationships are at play, what structures are being reproduced uncritically, which practitioners are genuinely expanding what photography can be. The tagline — stay critical — is both an invitation and a mission statement. For readers who want their photography journals to do more than showcase beautiful images, OVER provides the rigorous, honest discourse the medium deserves.
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