Z I N E
A photographer's thoughts on making of his first zine
I’ve been interested in making zines lately. This impulse is rooted out of my frustration of my own artwork being inaccessible to me and others—it’s simply locked into the digital sphere. Sure, I have a few prints hanging around the house, but there’s only so much wall space to consume. I’d much rather have something tangible to hold and engage with other than floating the archive in the cloud.
Zines are (or can be) as formal or informal as you want them to be—from a black and white xeroxed pamphlet or something that aligns more with the traditional book. It’s something that is thoughtful assembled, but at the same time, something that can be less than perfect.
I still find myself overthinking the design process. Justifiably so, the intent should be there for any respectable work of art, shouldn’t it? I have projects and ideas to implement in a zine (maybe too many), yet still I find myself questioning the size, materials, layout, whether or not to include text or just let the work speak for itself and so on.
One idea I like is to resurrect an early photographic project, 6th Street Society. I’m not necessarily proud of the quality of each individual image from this series, but the pulse of the project still pumps through my veins. Much of the project focused on photographing people on 6th street, in Austin, TX from 2018-2020. I’m wondering now how I can keep these people anonymous (my perception of portraiture has greatly shifted since… I’ll explain another day).
I envision this project to be printed on xeroxed paper because of the raw-grittiness of the medium. If you’ve ever spent an evening on 6th street, you know what I mean. I also like the idea of making this work accessible to anyone. I welcome the poor quality of the xeroxed images because the emphasis is less on the actual prints and more about the feeling of being there (there’s still some meditating to do here). Anyway, you get the idea.
Unfortunately, this project ended from a matter of circumstance, not choice. A lot of things changed in 2020, and I simply moved on (I also relocated to Milwaukee and worked toward an MFA). It is reassuring now to circle back to this project, especially with the perspective I have gained since. I will be re-locating back to Austin at the end of the month and look forward to passing out a copies of these zines on 6th street, too!
Here’s a preview of a work in-progress:
