Live Magazine & Bayard are trying something, a 100% paper magazine. Why? Because we share a taste for well-told stories and demanding journalism. To make the stories memorable for you who read them, we looked for stories that are fundamental to the journalists, photographers, and artists who tell them.

Each story is written in the first person singular. Twelve stories whispered in your ear like a podcast, hilarious like a stand-up comedy, moving like a film, moving like an encounter in the dead of night. Page after page, we have combined “intimate journalism and global investigations”. This is our promise. 

The real, like the present, like the sky above our heads*, is what brings us together. And it also fascinates us, because reality is crazy. And it’s not new: “Of course reality is stranger than fiction,” said Mark Twain on his return from a world tour in 1897. He adds, “The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction must be believable. Not reality.”

* On the cover, a cloud over the Black Sea on a July 1, on Otrada Beach in Odessa, Ukraine. It was photographed by Petrut Calinescu, the best photojournalist in Romania, according to the Romanian Photojournalists Association, who presented him with his award. He was on the stage of Live Magazine as twelve of the “freelancers” in this first issue.