Zine Making Research

What is a Zine?

The definition of a zine/zeen is short for a magazine and is self-published work in a small-circulation which is usually published vie photocopier. Zines can be a product of a single person or a small group which are photocopied into physical prints. The concept of zines came from the amateur press movement of the late 19th century, which crossed over with subculture of science fiction in the 1930s. This was known as a popular graphic-style which associated with zines which was an artistic influence.

Sky-Alling Phillips

From looking into Phillips’s work, i discovered that she was a very colorful artist who used photo manipulation in order to add a different concept to an image. She is known for her war images which have been edited to include brighter prints to bring more colour into an image as the old world war images were black and white which is adding character. This method is used very effectively as its helping hinder people to look at older images from the war, due to the new twist on the images to make them modern. Therefore, her method is helping to educate.

This photographer/ photo manipulator is not on the internet, however i can get a feel to the type of editor she was by looking into her images from a book.

There was a certain topic of hers which intrigued me which was simply called ‘Paper’. During this project she mainly worked with older images from the world war stage. This project included editing flower prints onto images from cut out windows, people etc. The use of the world war images was helping to educate people as they wanted to look at these now modernly modified images.

Example of her work..

Photo analysis

This image was displayed in a zine which was an A4 size and the particular image was landscape just like the whole book. The orientation of this image was originally from WWII , meaning Phillips did not take the original image. However, as seen she has edited a flower print after cutting out a soldier in the image. This is suggesting that even tho these soldiers are in a horrible situation as they are having to kill people to defend their country, they still have a colorful heart and are pure. The flowers are representing growth and the colors are representing happiness and childishness. Although we don’t know why they could be happy, the growth aspect is representing that although they are fighting for their lives they are living and growing, as well as growing from this horrid situation they are in. The colors could represent childishness as some people faked their age in order to get into the war.

Technical analysis- This image would have been taken in natural lighting as it has been taken outside which we can tell from the background. This also would have been originally taken with an old camera due to the black and white effect, meaning that there wouldn’t have been many camera setting to experiment with. However, it looks as if a fast shutter speed have been used due to the fully focused image.

Visual analysis- This is a landscape image which as we can see if a black and white original image with a flower print edit as a solider. This edit is directly in the center of the image making it stand out even more.

Leave a Reply