Together with Radix Media Cypher published its first Anthology!
We Are Many: Defending Women and Sex Worker Human Rights
“These comics share their wisdom with an intimacy you won’t experience anywhere else.”
—Elana Levin, Host of Graphic Policy Radio
Our mission is to bring together artists & Human Rights Defenders in freestyle collaboration of activism & art to inform, elevate & inspire. Cypher Comics seeks to advance storytelling and narrative framing work in collaboration with and in support of Human Rights Defenders.
cypher
/’sīfər/
The dictionary definition of cypher is ‘a secret or disguised way of writing’. In many ways, this is the essence of comics storytelling – the image, rather than the word, is a disguise for many words, that can convey meaning, emotion, and can re/frame an entire narrative.
Rap and hip hop culture has taken the word and ascribed a new meaning: ‘an informal gathering of rappers, beat boxers and/or break dancers in a circle, in order to jam musically together.’ This, too, we find relevant to this project, in that we are bringing together artists and Human Rights Defenders in freestyle collaboration of activism and art with the aim of informing, elevating and inspiring.
For us, this captures the spirit of why we are working in comics and guides how we facilitate the process of creative production.
Adam Shapiro and Beldan Sezen
(founders)
“My experience with the project was so awesome! I’m loving the use of comics here. It’s engaging and interesting. And I did enjoy reading the comics in the previous issues. I had a great experience and it certainly resonated with my personal life experience. In general, it’s awesome working [with] HRDs!”
“I just wanted to THANK YOU for the opportunity to tell a story from Tonga. Much appreciated and kudos to Natasha for the amazing artwork.”
“As an editor, I’ve seen the promise of comics/graphic journalism to reach new and especially younger audiences beyond the traditional readership of news and current-affairs publications—especially so in our digital age, where images have more reach and impact than ever, and also when it comes to matters of human rights and social justice, which often struggle to catch attention on social media when presented in more traditional formats.”
The first 17 editions of Cypher presented 59 stories from 45 countries/territories.