Reasons To Be Zineful, Part 1

"This is how I see things; what do you think?"

Apologies to the wonderful Ian Dury & The Blockheads¹ for stealing the idea of the title for this newsletter, but I do love a photo zine. I love collecting those published by other photographers and artists and I love producing them myself. And this week, I thought I’d talk about them a little and why I love them so much.

My reasons to be zineful!

What is a zine?

So, to start, what actually is a zine? The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as:

“a small magazine that is produced cheaply by one person or a small group of people, and is about a subject they are interested in”

Britannica defines it as:

“a small-circulation print or online publication that is produced through non-commercial means and is meant to appeal to a niche audience. The term zine derives from fanzine, an amalgamation of the words fan and magazine”

To me, the two defining features are, I think, (1) small print-runs, and (2) self-publishing methods. And for a photo zine, in particular, the primary content will be photographs. Maybe some written content, maybe not, but always photographs. And photographs which are deliberately and intentionally put together - by the photographer - to form the zine.

Part of my photo zine collection

This is how I see things; what do you think?'

It never fails to fire me up with enthusiasm how photographs become something else when they are intentionally selected, sequenced, printed, shared, and maybe captioned or written about too. I think zines facilitate these acts and therefore my enthusiasm. The ‘whole’ that is represented by a finished zine is in my view invariably greater than the sum of its parts. It is exciting and inviting in a way that is different to the impact of individual photographs.

Single images, often in the hands of skilled photojournalists, can be extremely powerful and sometimes mind-changing - definitive, resonant, impactful - but they may not always be capable of telling a fuller story in a way that a skilfully put together sequence of photos can. The act of grouping and sequencing can allow a photographer’s ‘point of view’ - their way of looking at life - to come through to the viewer.

It’s an offering by the photographer of an exchange to the person viewing the work: “This is how I see things; what do you think?”.

From Marist Day (2023)

I don’t believe in being prescriptive about how viewers should see my work. I care that they have some clues as to my point of view, but I don’t say: “This is how you should think”. I don’t wish to impose my view. I actually think of a lot of my work as questions to which I don’t have an answer, so I’m very glad of the exchange - I learn from it.

My reasons to be zineful

I create photo zines without the intention of selling lots and lots (although - don’t get me wrong - sales are nice!); they come from a place of wanting, loving, in fact pretty much needing to put down on paper a part of my vision as a photographer. They are the work, in the truest sense, of an amateur - I create them with and for love. I am, in this sense, an amateur photographer and I love that.

The word amateur derives from the French amateur "one who loves", which in turn comes from the Latin amatorem "lover", deriving from amare "to love". [www.etymonline.com]

To delve into this a little more, I think I have three main motivations in publishing zines:

1. They enable me to think critically about my work

2. They allow me full creative autonomy

3. They make my work accessible

Thinking It Through

Having loads of photos is great but I find it often takes the discipline of intentionally choosing and putting together a coherent series of them (with all the mis-steps and false dawns that that entails) to make completely evident to me my rationale behind making them. I really do need that extra step in my process - it’s critical to me. It’s like honing a paragraph of text after you’ve written it, replacing words, phrasing something differently - but with images… putting that image there in the sequence and not there, for instance, or leaving that one aside completely.

Creative Autonomy

The zine ethos is a DIY one. It is self-publishing and small-run. It relies entirely on the person doing it: in my case, me. It’s a compromise in some ways - you give up the super high-end production values, the polish, of the professionally designed, edited and published volume that you might hanker for - but you gain something in my view even more precious, the opportunity (and responsibility) of presenting your voice to the world, unalloyed and unedited. Just you and your vision. Take it or leave it. And I am very happy about that.

Accessibility

Zines are relatively inexpensive to produce, and thus sell. And it doesn’t kill you financially to occasionally hand one to a friend or acquaintance, or another photographer, or to donate one to the library as I’ve done in the past. And they can be printed and reprinted in open editions (thus small runs) as many times as you like. Or revised and then reprinted if you so choose. They’re not pretentious, and you don’t need to be too precious with them. To my mind, all their positives feed in to one big idea which is that they are democratic, open to all, available to all, and I love that. And of course they are real - they exist as actual objects - in our ever more digital world. How cool is that?

Reasons to be zineful, part 2?

I think I’ll probably come back to photo zines in a future newsletter as there’s definitely more to say. Maybe there’s space on here for the occasional review of a photo zine from my collection or from a contributor or collaborator, or maybe I could spend some time on how one can be made (or at least the way that I make one)? Zines as vehicles for photo essays? Where does writing fit in? There’s a myriad of stuff we could cover. If you’ve any ideas on this score (or if you’re a producer of photo zines and wish to collaborate) please do let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

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End with some photos!

This is what I always try to do. So here goes. These are photos taken with a cheap point and shoot film camera I picked up a few weeks ago - a Canon Sure Shot Telemax - using Kodak Ultramax 400 film. You can’t do much with the camera apart from frame the photo and click the button (and very importantly, stop the flash coming on!) so I was interested to see how they would turn out. Here they are:

These are all from very close to where I live, and I’m pretty pleased with them overall. What do you think?

Thank you for stopping by and I hope, as always, you have enjoyed my thoughts and work. Any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next week, take care and God bless,

Keith

1. Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3 is a song and single by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, initially released on 27 July 1979, which reached number 3 in the UK singles chart the following month. It is the last single to be released by the band in their original line-up. Parts 1 and 2 do not exist. [Wikipedia]