Starting with issue four, Radioactive began featuring graffiti from outside Finland. Initially, this consisted of just a few photos — either ones we had taken ourselves (usually in Sweden) or those sent to us by Finnish friends who had visited graffiti spots abroad. Everything changed dramatically in 1994 when we connected with 33 C’est Fresh magazine (Bordeaux, France) and started exchanging information and photos with them – connection that lasted ’til our last issue! So from issue five onward, we usually dedicated a separate section to the material they shared with us.
Later, in 1996, we also established contact with Xplicit Grafx from Paris, France. We began swapping photos with them as well, publishing the images they sent us while they featured some of our submissions in return. That’s how things worked back in the day.
And here’s a fun detail: All these foreign magazines were printed in full color — and they had way larger distribution than our small ’zine ever dreamed of.
Eventually, when we stopped publishing Radioactive, we had already established contact with Bomber magazine from the Netherlands. Since we were no longer producing our own ’zine, we simply submitted photos to them. We even had the honor of writing a small Finnish report, which was published in Bomber #16.
Now, as we transfer this material to our digital archive, we’ve decided to keep the original focus of the magazines intact: Finnish graffiti and graffiti by Finnish writers. However, the platform we’re using allows us to offer a more flexible solution to all these kick ass photos we have in stock: few dedicated pages, or their own issues if you will, for the material we’ve received from our international contacts… or sometimes captured ourselves during our travels beyond Finland’s borders.