Ciprian-Andrei Ciobanu, SELFOPEDIA, mixed media on canvas, 100/100cm, 2021
On the 19th of April 1993, the first issue of GAY45 was printed and hit newsstands, sparking a movement that would last for decades to come. The inaugural issue of GAY45 was thirty years ago. Today, the entire editorial staff of GAY45 is comprised of writers who hadn’t even been born at the time. They are part of a generation of 20-somethings breathing new life into the magazine decades later.
30 years ago, life for queer people in Europe was staggeringly different. The team of dedicated journalists and LGBT+ rights activists in Bucharest who founded GAY45 at the time could only dream of living in a society where homosexuality was decriminalised and dared not even dream of one where our community was accepted with open arms. It is hard to talk about the start of a queer community in Romania without mentioning the foundational role that GAY45 played in it. The world we live in has progressed, sure, but there is, as ever, more to be done. GAY45 was a melting pot of queer culture, politics, and thought, back then, and it continues its future-oriented progress into the 21st century.
30 years ago, the first issue was printed with a machine cut error. Today, that issue is collectable. Today, we are the first queer media outlet to use artificial intelligence. We are working on a Queer Journalism Camp geared towards aspiring young journalists looking for media representing their culture, interests, and identity. We are collaborating with cultural institutions from Taiwan to the UK. We have a team of dedicated editors, writers, and thinkers, based in Paris, Vienna, London, Cambridge, Timișoara, and more. Our readership is just as international, dispersed across every corner of Europe.
Since the first edition, GAY45’s mission has been to seek out the truth and use clarity and imagination to build hope. 30 years is a long time for any organisation to last, but thanks to the support and trust of our readers we now have a greater impact around the world than ever before.
What defines the GAY45 community is not geography, or even reading or supporting GAY45; it is a community of those who share our hope for the future, who know that the way things are now is not the way they have to be, and who want to make a different world from the suffering and solidarity that we have all experienced during these difficult years.
GAY45 is so much more than just a magazine. GAY45 represents the embodiment of love, acceptance, friendship, and hope for the LGBT+ community. It is making history. Its fight towards a more tolerant and compassionate future is needed now more than ever.
As a present, the famous German advertising agency Ferstauer has been tasked with a bold new campaign, aimed at capturing the essence of GAY45 and presenting it to the world with a fresh, modern twist. Their tagline, “GAY45. SMART. QUEER SMART,” perfectly encapsulates the magazine’s ethos and its unwavering commitment to empowering LGBTQ+ voices.
Post-Scriptum in an Algebraic style about 19th of April 2023
30, the age of GAY45
25, the average age of the editorial staff
37.148, the exact number of readers today
11, the number of permanent staff
9, the number of contributors
10, the number of cities where we have stations
An article by Miruna Tiberiu, Dominik Böhler, Ciprian Ciobanu, Răzvan Ion.
Miruna Tiberiu is the managing editor of GAY45. She is a student at Cambridge University. Tiberiu has written for numerous publications, including The Cambridge Review of Books, and the Cambridge Language Collective. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Cambridge’s first all-queer magazine, Screeve. Tiberiu is currently in Paris carrying out her dissertation research on Franco-Romanian cinema and intends to continue this work as a postgraduate at Cambridge.
Ciprian Ciobanu is the Senior Editor and Gen Z specialist of GAY45. He is finishing his MA at the University of Timișoara, majoring in painting and working in mixed media. Ciobanu is researching the mechanism of the relationship between art and the trends of a given time from music, fashion and popular stories.
