Zines

What is a Zine?

The main difference between a magazine and a zine is that zines are not out there to make a profit but, rather, to add other, often unheard voices into the mix.

Historically, zines have been self-published as pamphlets or leaflets as early as the 1700s. They were circulated independently by socially-marginalized groups to give voice to their opinions and beliefs. Over time this developed into an array of other topics, with the first “boom” of zines starting in the 1930s. Known as “fanzines” and “perzines,” these were started by fans of science fiction magazines who self-published zines about both science fiction and the connected fandoms behind them.

Moodboard:

I created this moodboard to showcase a variety of different zine types, this is because I want to experiment with multiple designs before picking a final selection.

Evaluation of Zine: ‘Turves’ by Christopher Days

Turves, a remote village amidst the Cambridgeshire fens, is home to a unique and profound world that, until now, has been little documented. This series showcases the world of greyhound racing, and its struggle in today’s society to withhold mainstream appeal. Christopher’s unique approach observes relationships between greyhound and trainer, and explores an absolute intimacy that exists beyond the race track.

I really like this zine, the photographer manages to document everything happening at the greyhound training house in an unbiased matter, however,he still manages to comment on the circumstance with his use of the camera. The photos are dark, stark and cold; they’re deliberately shot in this way to portray feelings of sadness and sorrow the photographer probably feels towards the topic. In terms of design and arrangement, there is a lot of blank space in this zine, the photos aren’t arranged in any clear pattern or manner; this further reinforces his views and adds a sense of disorder to the zine.

EXPLORING EXTREME EDITING

After my first shoot I have began to explore extreme editing in Lightroom and Photoshop to help establish a theme and way of enhancing images. I’ve edited each image to an extreme to understand how far I can manipulate an image, but also to understand how editing can cater to meaning behind an image and add personality. I’ve explored inverting images, changing the hue to enhance colours, over exposing images, layering bright colours over images and cropping. For example, I’ve cropped the head off the individual in the first image to shift the focal point in the image to the bike rather than the person riding it.

I think the overall mise-en-scene for this group of images creates an over-riding sickly effect that doesn’t justify my incentive or reason behind my images. However if each image is taken in individually, the editing entertains the underlying emotion and feeling for each individual in each image. These experiments have also helped me understand Photoshop and Lightroom more than previously.

These are few of my experiments;

Further editing:

I further developed some of my images by cropping, layering and repeating parts of each image to create an overall insight into each individual. These images were inspired by Lewis Bush’s editing style in ‘Metropole’ where he used double exposure to create abstract images that almost replicated a kaleidoscope. Instead, for my images I have chosen and cropped certain aspects of each individual that give away more information of what they were doing, how they choose to personalise themselves, facial expressions, body language and their surroundings.

In the second image I decided to approach the editing style in a different way. I chose to crop the image into long and equal segments to mirror the height of the individual. I then moved and lined up the images together to create the simulation of a casual stroll. This was to replicate the impression I had when I decided to take this image.