A zine (pronounced zeen) is an independently or self-published booklet, often created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The publication is usually folded and stapled.
Historically, zines have been around since 1776 when Thomas Paine self-published Common Sense and used it as an instrument in promoting the ideas that contributed to the U.S. War for Independence. Just a perfect example to demonstrate the free spirit of zine culture.

Within class, we were also shown examples of photography zines and newspaper collections to understand the composition of images, how colour schemes matter to show either contrast or resemble and that the shapes and space used must be purposeful, otherwise it won’t carry on the narrative.

I focused on the zine ‘Life here is Serious – The Sochi Project Sketchbook series’. I was drawn to this zine because of the composition of the images, and the actual images themselves. The images had minimalistic backgrounds making the portraits and details of the model’s face the centre focus.