Freja Newman

“When we talk about ‘seeing’, I think we sometimes forget its relationship to ‘being’. To ‘see’ is not just to look, gawk, observe and stare. It’s more than just the object or space before us (although that does, of course, have immense importance). It’s how we receive that object or space, or perhaps what isn’t there at all…what’s yet to exist. To ‘see’ is to respond; to react to everything we have received from our senses. We are constantly tasting stories, relationships, lessons, dialogues, and memories, and responding in completely different ways. Sometimes we refuse to ‘see’. Sometimes we choose to forget. Sometimes we see something and immediately shatter it before it shatters us.

That’s what this magazine is… leadlight; a lens.

As you open its pages, you’ll meet an assortment of people perceiving and responding to the world, harnessing words, art, photography, language, science, music, and memory. I present to you your very own window into lives and minds, each their own unique fragment, side by side, navigating what it means to live.”

Freja Newman – Excerpt from the Editor’s Letter from Issue One, Leadlight Magazine, 2024