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Thinking / writing about zines as I work to archive my collection of ephemera

@chatteringteeth.bsky.social2readers15posts14d ago

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"Memory Full, Vol. 6 - Secrets," V/A

In the words of the publication's editors: MEMORY FULL is a group publication that was started in 2011 as a way to show and share cell phone pictures away from a screen and in the real world. It is published on an irregular basis, with each volume possibly being the last. Another product of Western Massachusetts, one I again picked up from the Northampton Art Book / Print fair

Sean Bonney - "poisons, their antidotes"

Before I started cataloging the items in my suitcase, I’d previously resolved this year to read more poetry- starting with the handful of poetry volumes and chapbooks in my collection. Frankly, I feel like I need to take a class or something to get in the mindset of poetry appreciation – from 1000 feet up poetry shares many of the attributes that make photography so interesting to me (particularly the scale of individual works and the history of artists publishing), but it’s difficult for me to ...

"Grey Mule" - Jesse Smith

I don't know if my retrospective longing for the Instagram of the past is revisionary or not. Was it ever a good platform and it just became worse, unsuitable for my needs, and actively hid the artists I had volunteered to see? I think so. Was it ever good for my mental health, even at it's peak? Probably not, but I do have to say: my early experiences of participating in underground cultures, zine trading, and making photography and art are inseparable from participating with the platform. Bleg...

"Auto Da Fe," V/A

This is a zine, that I bought solely because I thought it was funny. It's long been a staple of the bookstand in my apartments. It is a single sheet of paper, folded in half, with a plastic bag stapled to the interior. Inside? From the text~~~ For this limited edition, WRAY Omnigatherum issued a call for doomed manuscripts. These were collected and submitted to the furnace. The ashes were then combined. I acquired this bizarre artifact from Grey Matter books in Hadley MA, the greatest bookshop o...

"Remind Me Tomorrow, Forever - Vol. 2" by John Patrick Waller

I picked up this publication at the Northampton artist book / zine fest in 2017 or 2018, back when it was being held at the A.P.E space on Main St. Remind Me Tomorrow, Forever is a very slim riso printed photobook, part of a series of 6 publications of which I own none other. It has sat in my collection for a while holding a strange space, because while I think it's not very good and at the time I felt like I spent too much money on something that felt a little low effort, the centerfold full bl...

"Something is Wrong"

Since this little project is at heart an attempt at a form of critical reflection - I thought this week it would be appropriate to turn that gaze around and lay it upon my own doings. This wasn't the first zine I ever made, but it was my first photo-zine, and consists of 15 black and white photos I took during the first year I was trying to really seriously take pictures and was hyper-stoked on shooting film. The subject matter follows three veins: photographs from shows at Cold Spring Hollow, s...

"Ground Zero - 2013" v/a

When I moved across the country I sold all my records. It had to be done, I was a terrible collector and treated my albums roughly, and they weighed so much my poor tired van probably would’ve cracked its suspension driving through the Rockies. I think a record collection is a great thing to have if you own a house, as a permanent renter, I’ll stick to my little tapes and zines. Before I trotted over to Armageddon records, I pilfered through my gatefolds and slipped out a couple choice album ins...

Cesar Vasquez Altamirano - Et Cetera 1

Et Cetera One is a collection of street photographs shot in London by Cesar Vasquez Altamirano. I discovered Cesar’s work on Instagram in 2020, before the pivot to video screwed everything up and made it impossible to surface work by artists not talking into the camera on their story trying to sell you light room presets or workshop passes to show you how to photograph someone in NYC walking out of a deep shadow. This episode brought to you by MPB! If I recall, Cesar was generous enough to pay i...

Joseph Mauro, "Calorie Free"

Joe shot the photographs in this book right around the time we met, in fact several of the shots in it are from that show – in 2017, where him and Sean Fennessey and Gyna Bootleg came up and played a bill at Cold Spring Hollow with Virgin Flowers and Kelby Clark from Divorce Ring who were on tour together. A good portion of them document a tour down to Miami to play the International Noise Conference at Churchill’s, a trip I made the same year, and it’s funny looking back knowing we were both at...

Zach Phillips, "OSR - Catalog #1 - Spring 2015"

Here is an artifact from my salad days hanging out at hippie noise underground shows in Boston. In truth, I don’t even know what OSR stands for, and I only know a handful of the artists on the labels roster through association with such venues as The Whitehaus, Deep Thoughts, and Gay Gardens in Jamaica Plain and Allston. I thought when I picked this item out it would be only a nostalgia-activator for the years where I would go out every weekend to get fucked up with my friends and go see Guerill...