It’s relatively often when I'm out photographing a guy at his home that I'll notice he has a few gay magazines lying around. Sometimes he’s even got some copies of Elska as well, which is always exciting and flattering to see. When I was in Seoul shooting our latest issue of Elska Magazine I actually met several men with a nice selection of LGBTQ publications on display.

One of them was Jose SM. In his flat he had an entire case full of gay literature. It included multiple copies of Elska, so many that I felt it somehow inappropriate to include an image showing them in his chapter in Elska Seoul because people might think they were put there by us as a sort of advertising. He also had the local Korean publication Neon Milk and a Vogue of two!

Jose SM, one of the guys we met for our Elska Seoul issue, showing off his magazine collection at home in Noksapyeong

Another gay mag fiend we met was Jamin P, whose collection included some vintage mags from Asia that he said played a pivotal role in his queer self-discovery journey. They showed him that a community was out there, that there was media/art made for him by people like him, and sometimes they even helped him get off! Unfortunately, getting his hands on them wasn’t easy (even today there are only a few gay bookshops in all of Asia, two of them being in Taiwan, and none of them currently operating in Korea) but he always kept his eye out when travelling to collect what he could.

Jamin P, another one of the guys we met for our Elska Seoul issue, showing off some of his favourite LGBTQ magazines with a drink or two, at his home in Aeogae.

Obviously there's various online content available for the queer world, but it's just not the same as having a physical publication. That's not just because I find it more enjoyable to hold a bit of paper in your hands, to feel that weight and smell that ink, but because they have so much more emotional substance. They can be displayed on a shelf at home for all your friends and visitors to see. Or you can tote them around town with you and read them in coffee shops, parks, or on public transport (with the curious eyes of people around you). And en masse they can fill the shelves of a pillar-of-the-community LGBTQ bookshop.

A look inside Taipei's GinGin Books, with a big selection gay literature, gay tchotchkes, and a nice big variety of Elska Magazine issues too.

Sadly, there are few gay bookstores left in the world as more and more people move to online ordering or just read online content on their tiny phone screens. It’s a shame — we still need gay magazines and gay bookshops because these physical publications and physical spaces serve as demonstrable and shareable signs of our culture and visible reminders of our existence. Maybe there will be a resurgence though — my own Elska Magazine is still slowly growing even if other mags have sadly called it a day of late. Independent bookstores are still struggling too, and we lost three of our own stockists in the past year. But I do believe a market is still there, we just need to remember that they need our support to survive.