The Newsstand - Independently published zines, magazines and artists books.
What was The Newsstand?- NYC 2013/14 - originally meant to last for 1 week, but was so successful it continued for 8 months.
- The Newsstand was a pop-up conceptual retail store that transformed an ordinary subway hub into a mecca for independently published magazines, books, comics, and zines.
- The contents of the store were not curated. As long as it wasn't offensive or racist you could drop it off and they would sell it.
Later Dudes #9 Everybody Dies - Happy - Hamburger Eyes - A classic zine by a prolific photographer and zine maker Kappy. Like in every Later Dudes, this is photography of street situations in San Fran.
Stoned Agin - Jennifer Shear - A collection of scans of collages inspired by 70s American hippie motorbike culture.
Shop Lifters Unite - Stephen McClintock - Stealbooks - Funny and colourful layout of a collection of found Polaroid’s showing shoplifters who have been caught stealing holding their loot.
Fuck This Life - Weirdo Dave - A classic zine series with an incredible style of collages of cutouts from magazines, newspapers, flyers and lots of small found objects from the street, organised and arranged in the meticulous layout by the artists to express the intensity of life.
Creeps - Lele Saveri - 8 Ball Zines - A collection of creepy images by the artists, which he made and released on Halloween at The Newsstand.
Locals Only - Peter Sutherland - 8Ball Zines - Custom-stickered cover The cover made from FedEx envelopes and each copy has a different collage of stickers made by the artists. The images are printed on a variety of very thin paper from Nepal documenting random and often bizarre phrases, signs and situations.
Rainy Daze - Earth Sucks //Bad Faith - A carefully laid-out tape0bound zine images of skateboarding culture. Each page is a foldout that opens into a subsection, revealing a second layout, almost like a zine within a zine.
White - Tyler Healy - Carefully composed study of classic shapes and close-ups in black and white, bound with a single staple, part of a trilogy.
Manute Bol (7 Foot 7) - Brain Paul Lamotte - Pau Wau Publications - A fanzine dedicated to the particularly tall basketball player. Manute Bol zine is uniquely shaped to represent the basketball players height and contains images accompanied by text.
American Woman - Adam Rossiter - Printed on pink paper, with a very well-executed Xerox mid-tone, this zine has 2 1/4” square images - all centred o the right-hand page-of rapper Lil Kim in all of her various stages of life.
Fire Guys - Idan Hayosh and Corina Kunzil - Kodoji Press - Photo series of firemen posing in front of burning buildings.
Shanks - Chen Chen and Kai Williams - Peradam Press - Documentation of 30 Shanks designed by the artist in their studio using found objects over a 30 day period.
How To Over Throw The Illuminati - An informative zine on the Illuminati, with a detailed explanation of the group and all the mystery surrounding it.
AA Bronson - The community and politics of self-publishing
- When artists started publishing books in the early '70s they were the forefront of the internet.
- The printing press gave the means for alternative voices to be heard, especially through the means of politics. Many people in the '60s used pamphlet or zine format as a way of exchanging ideas with a network of friends in a way that otherwise was illegal or dangerous. This helped to kickstart today's plethora of independent art publishing.
- Zines later became popularized through the explosion of punk self-publishing circa 1977.
- AA Bronson is theDirector of Printed Matter NYC a huge link for most independent publishing in North America, Europe and elsewhere.
- NY Art Book Fair emerged as an idea for repositioning NYC as a centre for the world of art publishing again.
- The print fairs have since happened all over the world which helps to bring together art publishers and create a dense exchange that in a sense imitates the internet.
Johan Kugelberg of Boo-Hooray - Zine History - Punk zines, science fiction zones, skateboarding zines, art zines... the roots go very deep and really far back into all kinds of toothsome underground communities spanning the entire 20th century.
- If the press or websites aren't writing about the music, clothes, art, food and people that you like start your own zine.
- Xerox Corporation introduced the photocopy machine in 1949. But took until 1969 for the cost to drop to make photocopy more accessible to the masses.
- The mid to late '60s, punk rock emerged which embodied similar aesthetic as zine culture which got people excited about having freedom of speech and being in charge of representing their community through print.
- Mark Perry published the first issue of Sniffin' Glue in the summer of 1976, publishing 12 issues until its termination in late '77; the first edition was 50 copies and the last reported print run was 15,000 which shows the significance for zines outside of mainstream culture.
- At least 2,000 punk zines had been published by 1980 - following standard format of collages, recycled photographs and a mixture of rub-on-stencil and ransom note typefaces.
Aaron Cometbus
- Making money isn't the point of publishing - not even recouping the money you put in. To make something cool and beautiful that is reasonably priced, you have to be prepared to lose everything. Only then is there any chance you'll succeed.
- A zine is a way of documenting on paper something that exists in time. If you go to the roots, fanzines were there so that you could have something to hold in your hand because the rest of the artist's work was music, it is a physical representation of it. But more than a documentary, because it can be a work of art in itself.
- Zines were a way for people to have something to give to someone when passing through new places and that would help to continue the convocation.
- The internet does a better job than zines in every way except that its lacking in physicality and soul, which is why zins are having a resurgence now.
- It's important to tell your own story. One of the problems with art criticism is that critics use works to alienate and intimidate their readership. You don't see them in making zines.
- The generational losses and gain you get from xeroxing are what show the evidence of the making.
- A zine is special and so specific. It's art, but kind of mass-produced. It's precious, but can be a shitty piece of paper.
- As an artist, you have control over what you want to put out, and it can be anything you want. There are no rules. Forced to learn everything (editor, photographer, writer, designer, printer, intern - all at the same time).
- It's a cool way to sort out a batch of photos versus an unending stream, on the internet. There's a front cover, some pages, a back cover and it's done, on to the next.
Pau Wau Publications - Zines as physical objects
- A zine us about the opportunity to express an idea and sometimes the less “good” a zine look the better it might be are conveying the idea. This is subjective, but the reason behind making a zine is how I would quantify it being “good” or not.
- The worst thing can look great if it makes sense and the most polished thing can fall flat if it misses the point. A successful zine portrays the maker, as most of the time its one or two people making it.
- There aren't any rules at all in making zines, it can be whatever you want it to be. The point is not to get to hung up over it and just make what feels right for you at the given time.
"Zines are written, designed, pasted up, photocopied and distributed by the zine maker, removing all intermediaries in the creative process."
"Zines exist outside the purview of all major bookshops and most libraries, yet they invariably find their way into the hands of those who appreciate them."
"A zine can be a photo essay, a personal narrative, a collection of drawings by friends. They tell a story, make a political point, or, most commonly, express a personal perspective so outside the norm that the making of a zine can be an act of great courage, a highly personal form of expression in a modest, easy-to-handle format."
"The physicality of the zine itself, so unlike a digital image flickering across a computer screen, makes a direct connection between creator and reader, and among those who read and share zines."
"Zines reach out to people in ways that the flat monologues and hysterical dislodges of social media postings cannot approach."
SUBCULTURES & ZINES TODAY
The rise of the punk subculture in the '70s spawned a new interest in self-publishing. Zines were used to promote a music scene that, with a few exceptions, received little attention from the larger music press.
In 1975 the first known fanzine was published by Legs McNeil and friends in New York, it was called Punk. 'Punk' covered the happenings in the New York music and arts scene.
The name of the zine; Punk was soon attributed to that scene. In 1976 the second most recognizable punk zine Sniffin' Glue was published in the UK by Mark Perry. The long-running newsprint zine Maximum Rock & Roll is arguably the most influential punk zine of all time.
The feminist movement, particularly Third-Wave Feminism, has strong ties to zine culture. The riot grrrl movement used zines to publish content that otherwise would not have been seen. They discussed sexuality and body image, as well as sexual violence, assault and abuse. The zines focused on personal experiences, not shying away from or censoring the gritty details. Erika Reinstein, the founder of Riot Grrrl Press, said, “Because every time we pick up a pen, or an instrument, or get anything done, we are creating the revolution. We are the revolution.”
From the mid-1980s through the late '90s, the review publication Factsheet Five (founded by Mike Gunderloy) formed a wide network of zine publishers and consumers (often the same people), encompassing a variety of interests and aesthetics.
Many believe that the widescale adoption of the internet (circa 1996) ended the most abundant age of zines. However, they remain popular, particularly among those who also celebrate other hallmarks of the "Do It Yourself" (DIY) philosophy.
DIY is the philosophy of living by ones' own means. For instance, instead of waiting for someone else to publish your writing for you, make your own zine and be your own publisher. Instead of spending money on overpriced commercial products with less-than-stellar practices, make your own clothing, or grow your own food, or whatever it is you can do yourself. The DIY lifestyle has been adopted by thousands of people for reasons as important and varied as the people who live it.
The resurgence of zine culture and why its so important
- Censorship runs rampant in the media, and some people can start to feel hopeless in their efforts to share their creativity with the world. Enter zines, the creative outlet that advertises complete freedom.
- Zines are reflective of the culture they are born in and are important, now more than ever.
- In a time of such political tension and untrustworthy news sources, zines are more important than ever. Those whose voices are often overshadowed—minorities, LGBT, women—need to have an outlet where they can still reliably be heard.
- Zine-making isn’t about rules or knowledge; it’s about freedom and power.
- Zines are an incredible testament to the longevity of print as a journalistic medium. Many zines have found themselves a home online, as either a full-fledged website or a scanned copy of the physical product. It’s an easy way to reach an audience you never could have had before.
- Xeroxgraphy which combines electrically-charged ink (or toner), a slight amount of heat, and a photographic process, helped to change the office environment forever.
- Mimeographs - This system, which had the honour of having been partially invented by Thomas Edison, was one of the most popular ways to make copies before the Xerox came along. Basically, a page of text would be set up as a stencil inside of a metal drum, and users would fill the machine up with ink, then basically turn the drum to put words on the page. The result looked really good, but the process was somewhat complicated, as you had to basically create stencils out of any document you wanted to copy.
- Ditto machines - Used in the ’70s or ’80s, you probably ran into paper copied using one of these devices, which often came in a purplish hue. The devices, also known as spirit duplicators, worked somewhat similarly to the spinning motion of the mimeograph, but with an added touch—alcohol. The end result didn’t use ink, but it did have quite the smell.
- Photostat machines - Perhaps the closest thing to a modern Xerox machine, these machines relied on literally taking photographs of sheets of paper, creating negatives out of those sheets, then reprinting them. It basically combined the camera and darkroom into a single machine. The machines were large and the process relatively slow, but unlike some of the other processes, it wasn’t destructive: Once a single negative was created, an infinite number of copies could be made. Like Xerox, Photostat became so popular that the term was genericized. Rectigraph, one of the Photostat’s largest competitors, eventually formed the bones of the modern Xerox company.
RISO
The Risograph is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective printer, which uses soy-based inks to produce unique outcomes. Each stencil (master) is made from thermal sensitive paper and unlike offset printing it only takes a single print for the screen to be fully inked and ready to print thousands of copies. The Risograph is extremely energy efficient and generates a minimal amount of waste.
The underlying technology of a Risograph is very similar to that of screen printing. The original image file is sent to the machine and it is burnt onto a master, the master is then wrapped around a print drum. This drum then rotates at high speed which pushes the ink through the screen and onto the paper as it is sent through the machine.
Today Risograph is one of the best ways of reproducing zines, its similarities to photocopy machines makes it the perfect tool for zine markers. It can be used in numerous ways to achieve many different results but it is one of the best ways to produce large quantities of zines. This type of printing makes each print unique (registration) which is what makes the process so popular with DIY zine makers.
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