So I’ve finally taken the plunge and published my first Zine…sort of. Let me explain.
This past December 1, I started walking my neighborhood for the first time in nearly a year. For most of 2023, I had stayed out of the streets with my camera. After a pretty intense three years of documenting Covid, the Black Lives Matter and January 6 Stop the Steal protests, and the exploding homelessness crisis in my city, I needed an aesthetic as well as a mental-health break.
I stayed creative throughout the year through cyanotype and film printing, traveling through the Southwest and photographing the Great Sand Dune National Park, and launching my Substack. But for most of the year, I kept my street photography on ice.
By late Fall, I was getting itchy. I wanted to get back into the streets with my camera, but I had no interest in documenting, and I had very little interest in photographing people.
I wanted to walk the night streets exploring the geography of my neighborhood — the alleyways and smaller side-streets especially.
During a reading of William Carlos William’s book-length poem Paterson1 — which is most famous for the line, “Say it. No idea but in things” — I had an epiphany that I could somehow tell the story and express the ideas of my neighborhood through the capturing of its things — whatever those things might be — its vestibules, windows, trash cans, sidewalks, street lights, graffiti, and so on. It’s a simplistic reduction of the imagistic approach Williams took with his poetry, but that’s how the project was initially conceived.
If I was to include people, I’d capture the “idea” of them, not their literal likenesses. I admit that I wasn’t exactly sure what I was after; the exploration is what felt most important.
One month led to another, and before I knew it, I had spent the entire Winter on this project, sharing parts of my progress through my “My PSQ” posts.
I’m still in search of the “idea” that will ultimately pull the images together. In the meantime I’m happy with the rich colors and movements I was able to pull pull from streets that most naked eyes see as derelict and run down. This project represents a new style for me— more abstract with richer colors and movement. One of my Substack readers called the work “experimental.” I’m not sure I agree; I wasn’t experimenting with this project as much as exploring. What tools and practices could I use to extract as much light and life from these dark and moribund streets?
In mid-March I paused the project so that I could curate the work I’d done so far. I used the neighborhood’s monthly First Thursday Art Walk in April as a deadline to pull together an Open Studio to show the work.
This was the the third Open Studio I’ve hosted, the first in which I offered prints for sale. Open Studios take many hours of preparation, but they give me pause to look at my photography with a different set of eyes and share it in person with my community.
My display had two walls of images from the project, about 30 images total. I also included what I’m calling my “Catazine” — this booklet that features the print details and image pricing usually found in an exhibition catalog, but sequenced thematically as I would have with a zine.
In other words, it’s part catalog, part zine. And I consider it to be a first draft to a longer, second publication on the project that I plan to publish once I’ve completed the My PSQ project.
My plans are to continue the project through the Spring and assess it at that point. With the longer days and changing quality of light, I’ll see where the project takes me.
In the coming days I will finally open up my Substack paywall and make this available to my paid subscribers, along with some prints from the project.
Until then, I appreciate the committed cadre of you who have been following me on this project. It means a lot. Thank you.
Open Studio 04/24 Details
32 pages; 8.5 x 11 inches; full color
Cover: 80# Semi-gloss paper; Interior: 80# Matte paper
Printed as a “Magazine” format through Blurb (www.blurb.com)2
Soon available to paid subscribers and via online ordering
My PSQ — PSQ being shorthand for Seattle’s Pioneer Square district — is my attempt at capturing the spirit of the streets of my studio’s neighborhood, the place where I’ve worked on and off for many years. My goal is to capture and share stories from these streets with as few words as possible. Not every story will be fun or uplifting, but I can promise you that they will be stories that only My PSQ can tell.
W.C. Williams was one of modernity’s great poets. Known for his objectivist, imagist style, he wrote that Paterson — the book-length poem he wrote between 1946 and 1958 — “is a long poem in four parts — that a man in himself is a city, beginning, seeking, achieving and concluding his life in ways which the various aspects of a city may embody…”
Overall I had a positive experience publishing this through Blurb. The software is intuitive and the platform provides several easy layout options. The final product is as good of a magazine quality as I’ve seen. I’d estimate it took me 24 total hours to plan, organize, and lay the book out. It took about 14 days to receive the first draft copy, and slightly less than that to receive the final shipment of magazines, thanks to the rush fee I paid. For future books, I will plan a full 30 days for the printing/shipping to avoid rush fees. My main criticism with Blurb is that its text tools are primitive and make it a challenge to incorporate text into the book.
My PSQ 24: My Open Studio's "Catazine"