Derek and Heather Leave JPG Magazine

Derek Powazek Hosted on Zooomr

Derek Powazek – The Real Story of JPG Magazine Derek Powazek has a detailed post out this morning about his decision to leave JPG Magazine, the magazine that he and wife Heather Champ started almost three years ago. Heather also has a shorter post announcing her departure as well.

This is sad to see and especially more so as the departure doesn't read exactly amicably. Much of Derek's post is directed at JPG CEO Paul Clouthier. I've only met Paul once, we had drinks about two weeks ago after Troy Paiva and Joe Reifer's show opening in Alameda. Paul seemed like a pretty nice guy -- we weren't really talking about magazine politics of course, more about photography and art and road trips and strange things that people collect.

It is sad to see though something that is as beautiful as JPG Magazine end up with this kind of a split with it's founders. Derek and Heather started JPG as a labor of love and were kind of like it's parents. They were a large part of the heart and soul and certainly community connection behind what was a brilliant idea -- to bring all of these great photographs that we share online on to the printed page.

I've particularly been impressed watching JPG Magazine mature over the course of the past few years. It was exciting to see JPG when it first launched. A bit clunkier than it's new sleeker sophisticated version today, but with every bit of passion going into it. I had a few of my photographs published there.

Derek and Heather I wish you well in whatever you pursue next. I hope it still has something to do with photography. For what it's worth, I think that there is plenty of room in the world for more than one photography magazine. But there are so many other cool things that will be done with digital photography that we have not seen yet. The future is beautiful and wide open.

Paul, I hope you can hang on to the community spirit that made JPG great. Because it is the content in that magazine that makes the whole thing worthwhile. And without all the people behind that content the whole thing just kind of falls apart. It would be sad to see this with JPG because it's been such a phttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifositive step forward for the online photo community to date.

There's a thread going on about this over at metafilter here. You can also follow it at digg here.

Update: Alana Jackson, who is the wife of 8020 CEO Paul Clothier has responded to this matter with a post in the JPG Group on Flickr.

Update #2: Paul Clothier, CEO of 8020