August 2024
I think I will start this month’s newsletter off by saying this is where I am: looking, waiting, gathering, and culling through images to see what there is in my archives that can be made anew in physical form.
Work and life have put me in a familiar rut, and I am struggling to resolve the misery of these unwelcome old friends.
My camera and I haven’t seen much of each other over the last two months, and though I have made a few handmade zines at home (one of which I will share with you today) and I have received all my planned zines from the printers (for release next month), I feel like I have been unproductive.
Recently, most of my focus has been on printed matter, specifically how to make handmade zines and, eventually, books while testing out ideas and seeing how things work as physical objects in relation to photographs.
One of the things I have been somewhat interested in is placing interjections into a sequence by creating physical obstructions of images with other images inside of the zines I have been making (in one zine, I sewed into the spine a smaller image in colour on a warm tone paper over a diptych of monochrome images on a cooler toned paper with a very pleasing effect), and in the zine I will share with you today I placed a small pocket in the middle of the sequence filled with small colour prints which came out just as I hoped it would.
The idea of the zine was to use the images I pulled from my archive to represent a sleepy, tired-eyed vision of the world through grainy, sepia-toned photos of abstract scenes of light and landscapes.
Also, the sequence begins in a heavier sepia-toned universe. After the coloured photographs, the toning becomes noticeably (hopefully, it will be evident in the images shared) lighter as we reach the end of the zine.
The short colour sequence contained in the small pocket in the middle of the sequence was there to act as a visual reference to rubbing one's eyes too hard to the point where one sees strange colours and blurred vision.
The zine is 4 inches by 6 inches, and all the materials (aside from the binding kit I purchased from Amazon) were sourced from the dollar store and printed at home using my inexpensive Canon inkjet printer.
To be more specific, the covers were made by glueing (or instead taping using double-sided tape) cardstock and craft paper together to give the inside a texture different from the front.
I then used a sheet of construction paper for the title page and end page to contrast the colours of the inner and outer covers, and I printed the images on generic sketching paper with a warm tone (almost cream-like but more yellow).
The “pocket” is a tiny paper bag I found in the craft section. The book was bound using waxed thread with a four-hole Japanese binding (I punched the holes with an awl and paper ruler to align all other holes correctly). The bookbinding kit I got from Amazon is all you need to start doing this at home!
Understanding how your images work physically is extremely important to understanding one’s own work and how one uses one's negative (analog or digital) to create a final object that will exist in the world.
Scale is unique in photography, as we choose the scale after the work is done, versus a painter who must choose a scale before they begin work on a piece.
In this sense, understanding how your work reproduces is fundamental to understanding how you picture your subjects and how those images will work as printed matter later on as individual prints or in books or zines.
I am very interested in intimacy and play, so I want to experiment with size, format, and different forms of obscurations and interjections within sequencing. Another aspect that fascinates me is the limitation of materials and the utilitarian aspect of everyday materials in object making.
As I am struggling greatly with my career path (or rather the midlife crisis of having no career path at all and returning to a job with no opportunities for growth after a failed venture to the United States), the one thing I have been photographing with my cellphone is my job and collecting materials from my day to day work routine (I am a warehouse manager for a pharmacy, it was what I was doing before I left Montreal and I got my old job back when I returned) like packing paper, cardboard, old flyers, stickers, plastic wrap and so on and I plan to make a zine out of these materials purely out of curiosity to see what’s there.
Before I ramble on far too long about my current low-tide season, I will wrap things up and pack my camera bag for a trip back home to continue to work on my upcoming exhibition in January 2025, which is approaching faster than I realized. Much work must be done before I feel confident I have enough material for the show.
If you live in or around Montreal, a film photography festival will take place in a couple of weeks, along with the World Press Photo exhibition, which opened this week and runs through October 14th.
I have picked up some new books lately and have a couple more coming in the mail, but we’ll talk about those another time. Thank you for stopping, and take care!
Love seeing all of the images laid out!
Very clever ideas here. Best for a great show.