Issue 10 Irregularity in Uniform Cover

The word Dogma was adopted from Latin, literally meaning ‘philosophical tenet or principle’. Before that, the word was Greek: doxa,‘to appear, to seem, to think, to accept’. In Plato’s Republic it was contrasted with episteme, the Greek route of epistemology, the study of knowledge. Belief, then, was opposed to knowledge. Opinion vs. truth. What appears to be versus what actually is.

In a more modern sense, the word dogma has become a pejorative. Beliefs are labelled dogmas if they’re rigid, if they defy reason or resist criticism. A belief becomes a dogma if it’s accepted without argument. They are illogical.

At Orienteer we like the juxtaposition of appearance and truth. We like the irony. We know — and have always tried to show through imagery — a great secret: that there’s movement in stillness and stillness in movement. We deal with motion in a medium that is inherently static. But it translates. It is almost like a Buddhist koan. The sound of a one-handed clap, a great effort ensnared in a flash. Koans are not riddles. They’re about understanding opposites.

This issue aims to showcase this truth. From Rory’s incredible images of the Glacier, poetry by runner Filipo Cantoni, to the Dharma Bums photoessay, where elements of rash hedonism contrast with friendship, care and spiritual pursuit. Similarly, Matthias Robey reflects on his journey through Corsica’s GR20, and how a lack of preparedness and hunger can sharpen the intrinsic rewards of long-distance hiking (this, in general, we don’t recommend).

The images here take place all over the world. They are windows into elsewhere. They are tokens of other places, other appearances, they are attempts to capture how the world seemed in that moment. Doxa. Dogma. Perhaps that’s all we really can aspire to do: see the world as it appears to us in that moment. The truth is hidden somewhere else. Julien Chaintreau, in his powerful essay The New Body Shield (a large, ambitious piece tracing the origin of outdoor wear and building on sources like Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra) says it best: “[the world] is full of signs, but increasingly empty of self-grounding.” What does it mean when a symbol is detached from its original meaning? When belief fails to track truth? When a skier flying through the air, or a cyclist, runner, hiker — when they’re paused and torn from motion to be presented somewhere else. A millisecond is made immortal and lined with traces, fluid remnants of the past and the future that surround it on either side. Hopefully the answers, paradoxically, are in here: deep in the mesh of it all.

— includes DOLOMITI foldout map
— 304 PAGES
— 230x300mm
— spot uv orienteer logo
— CMYK + LIME print throughout