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Street Dreams Magazine Flips the Script, Bringing Instagram to Print

If the measure of a successful party is the sidewalk overflow, then Street Dreams magazine had arrived.

Last September, to celebrate Issue No. 3 of its crowd-sourced photography magazine, Street Dreams gave a party at the Reed Space gallery on the Lower East Side. The gallery had room for 150 people, but more than 600 showed up. Within an hour, the police shut down the event.

“That was crazy,” said Steven Irby, 28, who lives in Brooklyn and is one of the magazine’s three founders. “That really helped spark the fire.”

The party helped to cement the success of three young friends who had taken their love of street photography and turned it into a calling for their peers, as well as an expanding publishing and social media brand.

“Now, you can start with an Instagram page and turn it into something bigger,” said Eric Veloso, 33, the magazine’s editorial and creative director, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. “A lot of companies are starting to backtrack now and get down to that root level. People want to see real folks.”

About two years ago, Mr. Irby and Mr. Veloso, along with Michael Cobarrubia, 38, decided to create a quarterly magazine that draws its content from Instagram users. In each issue, they feature six photographers: three women and three men whose Instagram followings range from about 3,000 to more than 50,000. The second half of the magazine is filled with photos that they crowd-source from Instagram by inviting users to submit photos using the hashtag #streetdreamsmag, which has been tagged on more than 1.8 million posts.

The most recent issue, No. 6, is 56 pages and includes submissions from 127 photographers. The pages evoke the walls of a gallery, with plenty of white space and minimal writing, save for short introductions for each photographer. There are no ads, and although the magazine had a limited run of 800 copies, readers can download a digital copy from the website for 8 Canadian dollars, or about $6 at the latest exchange rate.

The magazine’s novel editorial approach has gotten the attention of photography editors as well as scholars. “One of the things about periodicals is that they’re very of the moment,” said Karen Gisonny, a librarian at the New York Public Library, which added Street Dreams to its periodical archives last year. “Street Dreams is the epitome of that.”

Part of the appeal may have to do with the founders’ humble beginnings. Mr. Irby, who is the magazine’s editor at large, was previously a customer service representative in New York. He would often show up late because he would be busy taking photos. “It was becoming harder and harder every day to go to work,” he said. “I felt like I was wasting my time.”

Mr. Veloso, meanwhile, worked as a distribution manager at a Vancouver-based clothing company. It paid the bills but offered little else. “When I was turning 29, I thought, ‘Holy cow, I don’t know if I can do this,’ ” Mr. Veloso said. “I didn’t feel that I was being fulfilled.” He quit and went back to finish his photography courses. Finding steady work as a photographer, however, turned out to be difficult, so Mr. Veloso decided that if no one was going to showcase his work the way he wanted, he would do so himself.

He had discovered Mr. Irby’s work through — what else? — Instagram. After the two connected online, Mr. Veloso flew out to New York, and the pair spent a blustery fall day taking photos and brainstorming plans for a magazine. The Street Dreams concept was born.