Zines, zines, zines

 It's easy, they're cheap (affordable), and I'm a sucker! With photobooks reaching the prices where they are, for me, in the luxury purchase category zines are becoming my preferred manner of acquiring collections of photographs. Recently there's been a few appear which fit my rough collecting requirements. British rural subjects.

The first two (or six...) arrived the other week and are different in character. Village Lockdown is a response to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis as experienced in an Anglesy village, and so extremely contemporary. Agri[Culture] is a set of five zines, one being an introduction to a long term project by four photographers whose work appears in the other four zines. Country Show arrived a few days ago and represents a selection from another long term project by Paul Russell.

I've mentioned before that I'm not one for collecting series of publications or complete oeuvres of work. That's why Village Lockdown is the only one of ADM Publishing's Collated Observation series, it's number 02, that I've ordered. So far. This doesn't mean that others don't interest me, they just don't fit my current buying/collecting strategy. Such as it is!

In some way this one is half way to being a book rather than a zine. It's the same format as my poultry publication, which is more book than zine, but slimmer of page count. I'll be honest, I bought it primarily for the picture of a sheep framed by a goal post on a playing field. That there was another sheep photo elsewhere was a nice bonus. The photographic style is what I'd class as 'contemporary documentary'. A mix of empty scenes and portraits with hints of surrealism and strangeness.

Agri[Culture] is from the Wideyed Collective and has a different feel to it. As you'd expect from photographs made by different people the pictures cover a range of approaches. There's a definite concept to the whole production which has the feeling of being made as art containing more than photographs by the Wideyed Collective - Lucy Carolan, Richard Glynn, Louise Taylor, Nat Wilkins. There are facsimile pages from show programmes, old photographs and reproductions of visitor book pages from exhibitions of the Agri[Culture] pictures.

Paul Russell's project is one that I have been aware of for some time. The zine is pretty straightforward collection of photographs from the project. Stylistically I'd put the pictures in the surreal/humorous street photography arena.

Having this lot arrive in a short space of time raised a number of issues for me, ones which I often exercise my limited reasoning upon. How do we go about photographing 'the rural'? Who are the photographs for? And who the hell are zines for?

The last two questions are the ones are, I think, answered differently by the three publications. Wideyed have put their pictures on display at rural shows, they have engaged with the people likely to be in and to see the pictures. That must, therefore, be their intended primary audience. The other two are maybe aimed more at a photographically aware audience - if my reading of the styles used in the pictures are any guide. But what about the zines? Where they are promoted determines who is going to be come aware of and buy them.

Photographers are people who are likely to buy zines and books of photographs. But are other people? people who might connect with the photographs, or who might be enlightened by seeing them. I don't think it's enough to make photographs which only photographers are interested in seeing. There needs to be a way to get the pictures out to a wider public, or at least give them back to the kind of people who appear in them. So far my poultry book has been bought by poultry fanciers, and I'm pleased to say one copy is now in the archive of a poultry club. That alone has made the exercise worthwhile for me.

The rest of my zines, save those destined for swaps (which falls into the other photographer audience) and ones given away, remain unloved by anyone. Some of that is due to my inability to get motivated to promote them, some to the fact I only got a few of them printed. A few I've done just one or two copies for myself. I have to admit that giving zines away to people who appear in them feels right to me.

So what of my latest zine?

This one is a combination of shots from two loose projects which I realised could work together to make my point more strongly, with a touch of humour to lighten the cynicism. I suspect it's appeal, if any, will be to photographers or other 'creatives' as it's more conceptual than most of my other zines. Click here for a flip-through. At some point I'll put it up for sale at a bargain price. Not that I expect to sell any...

Making this zine was as much an experiment in design, I used full bleed on all pages, as it was a chance to try to make a point using pictures and words. Another zine I've made for an impending swap also combined pictures from two projects and was a chance to try some other design elements. This will be revealed when my zines have been received by my fellow swappers.

Getting out and about with a camera has been tricky of late. Short days, work commitments and foul weather have all limited my opportunities to look for anything. The moss is quiet due to the season and the state of the sodden land. This has driven me to go looking elsewhere.

A week ago the wind dropped and the sun shone so I went for a long wander round a nearby village and through the potato yard from the opposite direction to my first visit.

I'd been meaning to take some photographs of the closed down animal feed supplier's for sometime and that day the light was just right.

Leaving the village there was a light shower but after that the rain held off. I covered a lot of new ground and found some things worth taking photographs of. Whether they'll prove useful for anything remains to be seen. 

When I eventually got to the potato yard it was deserted, which was handy. However the sun was low and bright making life difficult with those harsh shadows landscape photographers seem to love. Give me a bright overcast any day.

One day I might get round to starting on my 'Leek & Potato' project...

Feeling very frustrated at only having taken product shots I braved a damp evening early last week to see if I could get anywhere with my village after dark pictures. The moon was waxing near full and there was a stiff breeze blowing clouds across the sky. I was forced into stratospheric ISO values and the accompanying noise, but as that's already part and parcel of the existing pictures it didn't bother me.

The intention has always been for these pictures to be displayed small and in black and white. A couple of the pictures worked quite well. Better than the ones I took on a previous nocturnal walk when the tarmac was dry and the moon minimal. F\or once it really is all about the light. For in teh dark there are no pictures without light somewhere in the frame. One thing I learned is that 35mm isn't quite wide enough. I'll be back on the 28mm in future.

Friday saw me dropping my car off for its annual service, which gave me time for a long walk to the post office. I took a camera along with me and saw one picture which I like. Definitely a candidate for my ongoing, maybe a zine sometime, Home Range project.

My car had to be kept in overnight and it was late afternoon by the time I got it back on Saturday. I took it, and a camera, for a spin in the vague hope of seeing something to photograph before the month ended. It felt like a wild goose chase until a lost ball saved the day. Number 490. ten more and I can give up!

Not far away as I battled against a strong wind walking back to the car I almost grabbed a good sheep picture. Alas I failed to alter the aperture which I'd stopped right down to both underexpose the sky and create a starburst trying to photograph than ugly tern sculpture again. It's poorly timed and there's a lot of noisy shadow recovery. Typically it was the best starburst of the lot too. Then the clouds covered the sun and I had lost another chance. Hey ho.

November has kicked off with another wander somewhere different for me between outbreaks of rain. I parked up in the same place as for the feed merchant photos, but took a different route to photograph something else which I wanted to record. A former petrol station turned car wash and café, destined to become housing by the looks of things. I made eight of the photographs into a grid.

That's the state of play as a second lockdown approaches. At least this time there is no time limit being applied to our outdoor exercising, and a short degree of travelling for the purpose seems to be allowed. I'm still floundering around as I search for a project to keep me interested. I probably should knuckle down to organising a couple of older projects into zine or book form when work quietens down and the rain falls. But new projects are much more fun!

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