JASON RHOADES was only 41 when he suddenly died just last year. Just a few months beforehand, he would meet with his friend and professional colleague ZLATAN VUKOSAVLJEVIC at San Onofre Beach, which lies precisely between LA and San Diego, where the two artists lived. Here, they entered into an artistic dialogue with one another. What emerged were photo-collages full of humor and tension. This dialogue was to be continued last summer. Julie Ryan continued a verbal dialogue with Vukosavljevic, finding out about things from tuna fish from Mecca, bananas, and—it's not a big jump—the Velvet Underground.

For HERBERT BRANDL, photographs are the essential foundation for his abstract paintings with which he will represent Austria at this year's Venice Biennial. He spoke in his studio with Carl Aigner about his passion for taking pictures and how he orchestrates his images.

TATIANA LECOMTE presents to our eyes the transcendence of reality when she seeks out sites of Nazi persecution, then combining them to form one image of experience in the photo-lab. Lyrical and at the same time ghostly are the final pictures, which in their intellectuality are reminiscent of the drawings of Victor Hugo.

At least those of us who were around in Austria during the 1970s can still remember: the test pattern on FS 1 and 2. In his sequences and series of banal objects, FRITZ SEMAK develops time. In his contribution Peter Weibel pays tribute to the conceptual and cognitive work of this Austrian photographer.

HUBERT BLANZ is someone that manipulates. With his computer he travels around the world, changing it, constructing fantastically disturbing perspectives. In so doing, he simulates and develops images like roller coasters of fantasy.

While the artists that we present in the Artist Pages of this issue provide a glimpse into various ways of understanding photography, Felix Leutner in his contribution offers insight into the world of the photolab, helping us negotiate our way through often confusing terminology.

Hermann Nitsch, an artist to whose work recently an entire museum was dedicated, tells of his many years of friendship with Giuseppe Zevola, whose multi-media work was shown for the first time in Vienna this year. Fotofluss presents an exquisite show of media art from India, and at Short Film Festival Oberhausen the question of a "third space" is posed, the cinema museum, which is intended to explore the intersections between film and art.

Read in our Forum the conversations about Arnulf Rainer and his approach to photography. Rainer's latest photographic work is also subject of the EIKON Special Publication #13, that parallel to this issue will be published to mark the opening of an exhibition at the Austrian Parliament.

We are especially happy to be able to begin a continuous collaboration with the students of Austria's classes of photography and media art. Beginning with this issue, a page of EIKON will be reserved for the presentation of the work of students, suggested by their professors.

And now turn the page and look forward to an interesting read!

With best wishes for an unforgettable summer,

Elisabeth M. Gottfried

And the EIKON team