I am now in about half way done with issue 4 of my zine and it feels like my personal creative process for these zines has now fleshed out into something that I am satisfied/comfortable with. But it hasn’t been straight forward, I have given my own creative process a lot of thought and maybe this journey of mine would be interesting for other people to read and think about also.
Personally it feels like the main difference between snapshots and art is intent. If you intend the images to tell a story, have a larger meaning, deliver a message, they will. But if you are only taking pictures of the sun because it looks nice, you will be left with something that is nothing more than a snapshot. A memory of what it looked like on that particular day, in the place that you happened to be at. Not necessarily worth any less, but it has different intent.
But let’s back up to how my process went for my first issue, called just Asia. There a few things that I was not satisfied with after finishing that issue:
It was lacking intent. What was the message? That I had been to Asia? The entire continent? No, just a few countries in Asia. So was it a travel issue? No, not really, it wasn’t about travel, it was just about the places I had happened to visit the years before. This idea feels weak.
The entire thing was made post factum, all images had already been taken, I just looked through archives and selected a bunch that were taken in Asia. I did not take the images with this in mind, it just happened to fit and was good enough. The idea came after, not before.
It lacked a personal touch to make it stand out from other film zines
What I changed already by the second issue was that I decided that I need to have some sort of stronger theme, an idea I can use to build a story of sorts, something that gives the images more weight when viewed through the lens of that particular idea. What I did, and still do, is that I start with this idea. I write down different ideas in my notebook, and I try to articulate that idea with as few words as possible and try to just find a single word that represents that idea. You could say that I try to boil down my own personal idea until it is no longer that easy for anybody else to interpret, to give it just enough vagueness. I try to have a word or two that I build from, as a foundation for the idea.
I also started using an old typewriter to give the text parts in the zine some more analogueness, which I thought gave a really good boost to the “personal touch” that I felt was lacking. I experimented a bit with having more written stuff in the zine, but after having gone back and forth on this idea I ultimately decided to not write that much. I would prefer to not even have a description on the images, but I got some feedback on this point - people seemed to feel that you need to give images a name or tell where the image is taken. I feel this topic is something that I will keep on exploring for a while yet. I don’t mind writing things, in fact, I think I am sometimes quite good at writing essay-style texts about photography/art. But I am uncertain if the zine is the proper place for them. Please let me know your thoughts on this, I am interested in hearing what you think!
Something that I also changed in my process was that I started taking images with the zine and it’s theme in mind. This, it turns out, is very difficult and time consuming. Not only do you need to be able to juggle many ideas in your mind and not forget your ideas. But you also need to, “prepare” for the future and future zines. If there’s some ideas that MIGHT end up in a future issue of the zine I start working on those ideas earlier on. I try to build up a catalogue of images that might fit the current issue I am working on but also future issues, future projects. They might not end up anywhere or become anything, but I feel that this intent gives my work more meaning. At least for me.
The final topic I would like to adress in this blog post is how I try to embrace the slowness of my photography also after the image has been made. I make small work prints, I look at the prints now and again, and let the images sit in a sort of brain stew for months while I decide if it’s a good picture, if it fits. I look at the “work-in-progress zine”, then I close down the software, and maybe write down some feedback for myself. Then I might do that again in a few days and look at my notes and see if I agree with myself. As most photographers know, images that you just took that you are really excited about, will look so good just after you developed the negatives/transferred the images to your computer. And a week later you feel “meh”. And then six months later you feel “wow” again. There is a balance. Don’t look at it too much, don’t work on it too much, give it some space. Then look at it again, maybe the editing/printing could be done in a totally different way? In the zine context, I try to not include images that I have just taken weeks before I send it out for printing. I don’t feel that I can be objective about the quality of the image, and I might try to persuade myself to sneak in something that doesn’t belong just because I am excited about it right now.
Alright, that was a long post. This actually took several weeks to write. Phew. Please let me know what you think down below in the comment section. And take a look in the shop if you find anything you like, if you want to help me keep this website running. Thanks!