When Rookiemag started, in September 2011, the very first theme was aptly, “Beginnings.” The start of something new. There was no way to know, at the time, that “Beginnings” was going to not only be the beginning of a new publication, but also the beginning of a new era of teen culture. Rookie, at that point, was just an idea, a dream of what could be. In her very first editor’s letter Tavi Gevinson said:
“Rookie is not your guide to Being a Teen. It is not a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman. (If it were, it would be published by American Girl and your aunt would’ve given it to you in the fifth grade.) It is, quite simply, a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in. While there’s always danger in generalizing a whole group of people, I do think some experiences are somewhat universal to being a teenager, specifically a female one. Rookie is a place to make the best of the beautiful pain and cringe-worthy awkwardness of being an adolescent girl.”
While I think that this little excerpt perfectly encapsulates the essence of Rookie at its core, I find that despite all the things Rookie was trying not to be—it ended up, at least for me—being those things. I read my yearbooks like the bible. Consulted articles whenever I needed advice. Despite the noble intention of not wanting Rookie to be a guide to being a teen, for me it absolutely was. It took the universal experience of teenage girlhood and made it personal, allowing people (me) to realize that what they were going through was awful, hilarious, awkward, beautiful and most of all normal. I’m so lucky to have had it as a resource to help me through first kisses, friend breakups, and my black lipstick era. Rookie was the proverbial online Virgil to my Dante, keeping me company throughout the journey of being a teenage girl, and sticking by me through the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Today we bring our journey back to the earliest days of Rookiemag, September 2011, and explore that very first monthly theme. Sit back, relax, take off your elaborately decorated denim jacket that serves as a substitute for an actual personality, and enjoy the ride.
xx Sarah
Cartoon Characters and Their Teenage Alter Egos: A List by Hazel Cills
This is one of my favorite early Rookiemag articles. It still has that irreverent, experimental feel to it, along with a funny and somewhat sarcastic hint. Also, it was almost definitely my first foray into the world of “Daria”.School Spirit by Petra Collins
The first photo series done for Rookie by the now iconic photographer Petra Collins. The girl gaze images that came to define a generation!How to Turn Your Life Into a Coming-of-Age Movie by Amber Humphrey
I’m not saying this article is the reason I started forlornly looking out the window of the school bus every day à la Sofia Coppola, but all I’ll say is I wasn’t doing that before I read this…Great Expectations By Jude (Sady) Doyle
Another classic perfectly illustrating that there is no one teenage experience, and no one right way to be a teen. Chef’s kiss.Getting Over Girl Hate and First Encounters With the Male Gaze by Tavi Gevinson
This is a two-for-one. Rookiemag: Making girl hate and the male gaze uncool since 2011 (even though those things were uncool waaaaaaay before that). Both these articles really emphasize the for-and-by-teens aspect of the publication and are written in a way that feels earnest, when a lot of of what was being written at the time (Seventeen Magazine, Cosmo Girl, event Teen Vogue) felt hokey and cheap. It might seem trite by today’s standards, but this was early 2010s feminism at its finest.
Savana Ogburn (she/her is a photographer, collage artist, animator, and set designer based in Atlanta, Georgia. Savana contributed photographs, collages, DIYs, and more to Rookiemag between 2015 and 2018.
Sarah Isenberg: So, I really want this to be more of a conversation than an interview. I know you’re a big fan of Rookie, I’m a big fan of Rookie, but to just kind of jump things off and get things started: do you remember how or when you first found Rookiemag, or the ways that you first engaged with it before becoming a contributor?
Savana Ogburn: Sure! Ok, I remember, weirdly— and I can’t remember when this was— I probably had to have been like thirteen or fourteen; I remember finding Yearbook One, in a Barnes and Noble. I was, like, obsessed with looking at the YA-but-Art-Book kind of section, [which was] a very tiny section in my suburban city. They had a copy of Yearbook One, and I remember flipping through it and being like “holy shit I’ve never seen anything that looks like this before, it’s so cool,” but like promptly putting it back on the shelf because [it was] thirty dollars; I was thirteen; there was no disposable income to speak of. So, I remember briefly seeing it then but not ever returning to it until years later. It had to have been through Tumblr. I can’t imagine it wasn’t through Tumblr! I was on Tumblr so much because I was super into music. I got very into Paramore when I was thirteen and was a big Warped Tour kid, so I was into all of that. I was on Tumblr following bands, and I assume that was how I really got into it, but it hit really at the right time. I had to have been fifteen when I found it online and just, like, dove into the archives.
SI: That makes a lot of sense. I feel like a lot of people’s first entry into it was via Tumblr. You kind of mentioned that you were into music and a Warped Tour kid; what were you like as a teenager that drew you to [Rookie]?
SO: I was very introverted; I think I still am an introverted little queer kid. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was feeling, I think, in regards to my queerness. I just was not going to admit that to myself. I was such a little weirdo and I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain why or who I was, and there was no one around me in terms of like, an older sister, or a friend’s older sister that I looked to and really admired, I guess. So I turned to these bands. When I got really into emo music, I got very— I distanced myself far from pop music and cool, mainstream pop culture. I was like, “I’m not allowed to like that anymore because I like this thing”. So, when I found Rookie, it was a space where you could like all of that. I mean, granted, they weren’t like, talking about these bands that I was into at the time, but they were talking about, I don’t know, Bikini Kill and the Riot Girl bands who were “capital C” Cool. But, they would also publish articles about why Carly Rae Jepsen was great. I remember listening to Emotion, and I was like, “OK I do love this, and these people are saying I’m allowed to love it, so this is great for me.” It just expanded on the pop-culture kind of world that I was already clinging to at the time. It just went from one obsession to like [another] broadened obsession.
SI: That makes so much sense. I totally feel the same thing you are saying about liking certain things, and having those things be perceived as cool, but then having things that are being touted as, like, totally mainstream, and maybe uncool. Having it be ok to like that, or, [for example] being a total Taylor Swift head, or loving Beyonce [when] “I listen to bands that nobody knows” was really the ethos of the time. So I completely agree on all of that. So then, how did you get started as a contributor? What led to that?
SO: Yeah, so I can’t remember how old I was. I guess you said I started in 2015? That was the year? Why this is not in my brain is beyond me. So probably in 2014, I started sending things into their submission email. I started doing photography when I was thirteen. Everything hit right then, it was crazy. I found Rookie— it opened my eyes to different types of visuals. Not everything had to be perfectly polished photoshop or glossy or ultra-dramatic. The things on Rookie were so tactile and textural and goofy, and it didn’t take the work too seriously a lot of the time, I felt like. And again— couldn’t have articulated this then— but I think that I had put myself, or was trying to put myself in a box of doing the weird super dramatic conceptual stuff, also doing live music photography. I mean truly a teenager mish-mash of stuff I liked. I was trying to fit myself in to all of those specific genres of photography, but Rookie was so expansive in the kind of work they published. It was super empowering— sorry to use the ‘E’ word— but to see young women making work that was so developed, aesthetically, was wild to me. So, I was sending in some of the work I was making that was kind of inching towards that aesthetic. A lot of kaleidoscope filters and mod podge glitter stuff on prints. I got rejected I think twice. Two of the things I sent in first got rejected. And then, maybe months later, I had posted something on Instagram and tagged Tavi. I think I had made some— this is so of the time— girl power prayer candle.
SI: *Laughs*
SO: This is why I love talking to Rookie people, you get it.
SI: If you only knew the amount of those that I made, not only for myself, but as gifts for friends…astronomical. I have single-handedly kept the Jesus candle aisle of the Dollar Store in business since 2013.
SO: There was a moment where I bulk ordered like 20 of them from dollar tree and went to town. But I had made one that was like a collage of all these women that I admired, and Tavi was on it. I had tagged her, I’m pretty sure. I haven't confirmed this with her, I really should, but I think that’s how she found me, because I got an email very soon after I shared it. She had liked it. The email was very casual, she was just like “Saw your work. Love it. Would you be interested in being a contributor? We’ll pay you.” Or something like that. I freaked the hell out. I mean I like, ran to my mom’s room and I was like “Oh my god! I’ve made it! I’ve peaked!” So, obviously, I said yes. I was pitching immediately on that current theme, which the first theme I had work under was “Both Sides Now,” which was in reference to the Joni Mitchell song. I remember listening to it at the time and being like “Ugh, I don’t like this.” And now I’m addicted to it, and that song specifically I was listening to it the other day, and was like “Oh shit, this plays into a lot of the work I’m making right now about identity and duality.” Very interesting how that comes full circle. I started contributing very quickly after that and was pitching three things to them every month, and shooting all the time.
Si: That’s awesome. That’s so cool and so fortuitous that you had started submitting to them and they just kind of found you. It was a real “Both Sides Now” situation!
SO: It all goes back to Joni, doesn’t it?
SI: Everything goes back to Joni, truly.
SO: It’s really crazy, and that’s something I’ve found, now with work too, that the more I try to white knuckle things and bring them to me, the less they want to work. Because people are gonna come to you. It’s interesting stuff.
SI: That’s so true. You kind of spoke on this a little bit, but do you think being a contributor to Rookie changed your artistic style?
SO: Completely. So the first thing I shot for them was this— I pitched a photo series. Basically, the mood board for both sides now was a lot of freaky sci-fi imagery where it would be like, a field with a UFO. I pitched a shoot where I was going to photograph three of my friends dressed more or less in the same outfit. They were going to be in a field, and I was going to get a little UFO print out and with my hand, hold it in front of the camera. At the time I was also very inspired by Tim Walker. I still am to this day— he is photo-dad. He had done this photo series; I don’t know if you’ve seen these but they’re— they had constructed a giant UFO, because everything for him happened in-camera. They photographed this elderly lady sitting in the UFO, looking so out of place, and he’s holding in a delft teacup and saucer into the top of the shot above her. It’s so stunning. When I immediately saw the mood board, I saw that UFOs and sci-fi were on it, I thought of that photoshoot, which is one of my favorites. I thought, “well, what if I did a spin on this?” Which is kind of a rip-off. I can just hold a UFO in and have these girls in this freakish, perfect field. So it would feel— so my intention was for it to feel like a silly type of sci-fi thing. And I got to the field that day and I was photographing my friends and I was trying so hard to make the UFO part work. It was looking like garbage, and I was like “I don’t know what to do! I think I’m just going to scrap it and I guess a lot of other people on Rookie do a lot of collages, I’ve kind of dipped my toe into it, but I think I’m just going to go balls to the wall and collage UFOs into every single one of these pictures.” After that I realized the possibilities of collage in my work, and that I didn’t have to build sets. I didn’t have to struggle on a photoshoot, trying to hold things in and do everything myself, because, at that point, I would not ask for help. I was allergic. So, collage made it so that I could make things that looked really fantastical and immersive, and I didn’t have to ask anyone for help with it! I didn’t have to pay for a set, I didn’t have to build it, because I couldn’t. But yeah, I think that first shoot pushed me right into mixed media.
SI: That’s awesome. That’s so cool.
SO: And also, I should just say— quickly before we move on— that to be, fifteen, eighteen years old— to have the opportunity to pitch to real editors every month, to learn how to write pitches and sell my ideas. How to deliver on a deadline and get photo releases, all of those things that are probably boring to most people— that is what really rocked my shit, and taught me how to do this for real.
SI: It totally set you up for success, because you’re going into it completely blind anywhere else. And I feel like, in that kind of environment— I can’t really speak to it, I never contributed— but I feel like they’re really welcoming and they walk you through that process, making you comfortable.
SO: Yeah! Totally! I worked primarily with Lena Singer, who is a great editor. Love her to death. I remember there was a moment where I was like sending in a potential casting for a shoot, and she very kindly was like “hey, we’d love for this to be a little bit more diverse!” And I was like “oh, that’s something I need to think about!” Where perhaps had I jumped right into working on campaigns somewhere, later on, that could have been delivered to me in a way that— I don’t know— might have been difficult. The way that Rookie would critique you and give you feedback was always very gentle. It was very big sister. I think about that all the time.
~
This is part one of my interview with Savana Ogburn. Part two coming soon to an inbox near you!