Sasha Strunin Covers CKM Magazine
Sasha Strunin takes the cover of CKM, the Polish men's monthly that was a regular fixture on this blog.
CKM was one of the best-known men's magazines in Poland, a monthly mixing lifestyle features, humour and glamour photography in the broad tradition of the international men's titles. Its covers were the magazine's shop window, and landing one was a step up from appearing inside. This page marks the issue that had Sasha Strunin on the front.
The cover shoot
A cover is a different job from an inside spread. It has to work at a glance on a crowded newsstand, leave room for the masthead and the cover lines, and still look striking once all that text is laid over it. Photographers usually shoot cover frames with the model facing the camera, closer framing and clean backgrounds, then move on to the looser, more varied pictures that fill the feature inside the issue.
For a monthly like CKM, the cover star typically anchored the whole issue: a headline on the front, a multi-page spread inside and often a short interview to go with it. Monthlies had the space to give a feature room to breathe, which is one reason readers outside Poland followed the title too.
The cover and the pictures inside belong to the magazine's publisher and are not reproduced here. More CKM covers and features from the period are collected on the CKM hub.
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