#doczine

Due to the nature of my plan being more of a journal idea, I had a lot more writing originally. I had been working on this throughout shooting and adding anything I had spoken about with my sitters in where I could. However, because of my decision to simplify the zine I felt I also had to simplify the writing. 

For the, I ended up taking inspiration from what I already had and shortening it down to a poem that I felt covered the journey of transition that I was trying to put forward. 

I wanted to keep the simplicity of having a single image for each page, and toyed a little with where the placement for the words would be. Eventually I landed on the final product of it all being below each image, as I feel it flows well page to page.

I left the issue of a front cover until the very last minute, too. I initially thought of taking a self portrait for it, as the shots of myself inside the zine do not show my face. I decided against simply because I couldn't stomach the idea of myself being on the front, however I did remember my previous shot of Luca that was horizontal and couldn't fit in. Thus the front & back covers were made about 2 days before final prints:

As the topic of my zine is very personal to me, I felt it needed an explanatory foreword. Alongside this, from the very planning stages I had hoped to have additional writing and more documentary style photos. I had planned to add these haphazardly as if journalling, however upon toying with presentation ideas I decided a sleeker look would work best.

I knew I had two photos from each shoot. Here are some examples of how I’d originally planned to format things:

I had also initially planned to handwrite anything written, but later on chose a glossy print paper so couldn’t do this for the ink running on the prints. I am printing with a local business who creates homely decor and graphic design for Etsy and Facebook shops. I found this massively helpful, because her offices are just a walk away so I was able to go back and forth and correct any last minute issues as they came.

We did a small version print as a trial run with just the images printed, no writing.

Photographing Luca:

Luca is a friend from high school who had begun his transition after that time. I hadn’t actually seen him in person since his journey began, but he reached out to me in interest of the zine. I’m quite grateful for this shoot as it did allow me to rekindle a friendship in a way I didn't expect. 

I photographed quite plainly as to keep in theme with the other shots, and I feel the lighting arrangement went significantly better throughout this shoot. There is a horizontal shot that I really liked from this shoot that I’ll include below, but I’m unsure of if it will make the cut due to it being the only one in landscape orientation.

Example of contact sheet: