Pages from the publication
Box of Water

No. 1, Stephen Perkins, San Francisco, USA, 1985
No. 2, Stephen Perkins, San Francisco, USA, 1986

“I got involved in the ma-network in 1984 while I was living in San Francisco. […] Inspired by all this activity I decided in early 1985 to start my own magazine. I put out a call for submissions to Box of Water and things just started to flood into my mailbox. At this point I became well and truly hooked on the whole activity. I realized that it was more than just a distribution system but a whole alternative culture that had a history and philosophy as well. Aside from being excited by the visual submissions‑I was particularly seeking image/text work, the other magazines from the network that people sent for review really excited me. The range of magazines, the different activities covered and the fact that they came from many countries really inspired me and I fell in love with them and with this whole underground publishing culture. The first issue of Box of Water came out sometime in the middle of that year (1985) and I was pleased with the response and immediately started collecting material for the next one. Slowly I also became aware of other people in the San Francisco area who were publishing work from the same network and I became aware of being part of a local community of publishers and artists as well as being part of a larger international community of like‑minded people.“ Janssen, Ruud: The Mail-Interview With Stephen Perkins, IUOMA, 1996