Local Talent: Anthony Smyrski & Dan Murphy

Contrary to its name, Megawords, the photo magazine started last year by graphic designer Anthony Smyrski, 26, and his artist friend Dan Murphy, 30, doesn’t have words in it. Sure, some sneak in, via images shot by mostly Philly photographers. But while those unrelated bits of verbiage give the magazine a sort of haiku-like content, the pictures do the talking. Megawords No. 3, for instance, has photographs of Philadelphia, Bangkok, and Katrina-ravaged New ¬Orleans, and without any words, it’s damn hard to tell the cities apart.

Part art project, part social experiment, Megawords is free but spottily distributed — you can find it in some Philly bookstores, galleries and record stores, at the library, and on the Web (megawordsmagazine.com). According to Smyrski and Murphy, it’s a kind of populist tabloid, an extension of magazines like LIFE and Colors that covers, as Smyrski says, “real people.”

“Generally, magazines are all about telling people what they’re not, like, ‘Look at these beautiful people who you will never meet, these products you’ll never be able to afford,’” he says. “We want people to look at their own lives and see them as valid. Maybe more than valid, maybe something completely sublime.”