THE PROJECT:

Friends in Soft Focus is a correspondence-based art publication rooted in a deep appreciation of physical media and a visible hand.

Conceived as a series of quarterly mailed editions, the project gathers invited artists, writers, poets, photographers, and thinkers to contribute work shaped around a single-word prompt. Each release is assembled as a tactile object, displaying the work in an experimental and unexpected medium. The work is intended to be encountered slowly, away from screens, and outside the logic of constant visibility.

Rather than functioning as a digital platform, Friends in Soft Focus exists through the physical act of sending and receiving. Each edition arrives by mail, composed as a complete object and issued in limited number.

Contributing artists are invited to interpret the prompt freely, responding through visual art, photography, poetry, short fiction, or hybrid forms. While each contribution stands on its own, the editor composes the mailing as a cohesive experience.

Friends in Soft Focus favors emotive ceremony over spectacle and appreciation over performance. The project is quiet. It is designed to be encountered rather than announced.

At its core, the Friends in Soft Focus project exists to connect artists with attentive readers through a slower, more deliberate exchange. Each release contributes to a growing archive of correspondence, and a body of work designed to be lived with.

Over time, Friends in Soft Focus aims to build a publication that resists disposability and rewards patience.

THE CUSTODIAN:

Friends in Soft Focus is conceived and edited by Margaret Perkins Lewandowski.

With a foundation in fine art and photography, and professional experience in art direction and marketing, her practice bridges world-building and strategy. The role of the editor is not to direct the work, but to shape the container in which it lives.