Zine Inspiration

This zine by Laura Braun was a personal favourite from the Salford Zine Library. It shows her journey from England to Portugal and back in November 2007 - June 2008 through a line of several film photographs printed onto cardstock. Furthermore, it has a dedication:

"To my parents, Petra and Thomas, who taught me how to travel."

It is this personal element and its format that I like. I feel more connected to the zine and the photos are taken from a perspective that almost make me feel like I could be stood there taking that photo myself. Additionally, this personal element creates a sense of the maker's identity and also memories; 

subjects I am very interested in.

For my own zine(s), I'd like to explore ideas about memories perhaps in relation to my own hypothetical exhibition proposal from the previous Framings unit and explore the idea of identity and memory through wardrobes and clothing. My initial ideas are something along the lines of an exhibition guide like zine for my hypothetical exhibition.

Salford Zine Library // Nexus Cafe

All images taken myself - Zines available from Salford Zine Library

The Salford Zine Library, situated in the Nexus Cafe in the Northern Quarter, had a wide variety of zines. They came in many forms and covered a variety of topics from feminism to socialism to bulimic whales to personal memories.  The huge variety of types of zines gave me a lot of inspiration for presentation of my zine. I preferred the zines that had an evident element of handmade or craft or is personal to a person. This allowed me to feel closer to the maker and more of a connection. Additionally, the ideas of handcrafted and personality seem to make the zines much more labour intensive suggesting the strong ideas and importance to the maker.

 

Initial Thoughts

I was quite excited to start the Zine Fair as I liked the idea of making my own magazine. During the initial session, I was worried as many of the Zines shown were solely image based. As an Art History student, I am used to writing, putting my thoughts into words, to analyse and criticise thus the idea of creating a zine with a lack of words made me feel very anxious. I don't feel like I am able to spend 6 weeks on making a zine of only images.

However, after further research I discovered that many zines do not use just images but the content can be anything the maker desires so long as the zine fulfills the other criteria that makes it a zine. The common criteria for zines appear to be very much related to how they are made and distributed. Zines are 'underground' publications and have a lack of commercialism and capitalism. They don't have adverts nor promote capital goods like many high brow magazines. Furthermore, zines have a low production costs, often with elements of craft and handmade using image and text and photocopied. The end product is often folded and stapled but can be printed and bound in any matter (athough there is some controversy if professionally printed products may be defined as zines).

Having seen the variety of zines in the lecture and in  Fanzines (Triggs: 2010) the content is hugely varied and it appears the content of a zine can, to an extent, be whatever the maker wishes.