Why making zine?

I decided to go with zine format for my photography works, but why? If you don't know what is zine, zine is a self-published reading material usually produced in a small amount, small in size, less pages and small-circulation. The regular form of a zine is, staple bind a few piece of A4 papers, and fold them to make a A5 size booklet. Zine can be in variety of formats, such as printed or hand-written text, comics and photographs. The person who produces zine call themselves zinester. Zinester have a saying, "Zine making for love, not money", that quote strike me. Yes, I did it because I love doing it, the keyword "Love" is a very important element in zine making.

我決定我的攝影集用zine的形式詮釋，為什麼？ 如果你不知道什麼是zine，zine 是一種小型的自製出版讀物，體積小，頁面少，流通量也低。製作zine可以很簡單，把幾張A4尺寸的紙釘了、折成A5尺寸的書就可以了。zine有很多形式，可以是文字的（印刷或手寫），漫畫或攝影。zine製作者稱自己為zinester。zinester有種說詞『製作zine，為愛，不為錢』，它打動了我。沒錯，我製作zine因為我享受其中，“愛”是製作zine的一個重要元素。

Another thing that I love about the zine is Imperfection. Yes, you do not hear me wrong. Zine is no way close to perfection. The idea of making zine perfect is insane. Or I should say, the perfect zine is a zine that is so imperfect but you still like it. I tend to photograph something imperfect, the scratches on the street walls, a tear pieces of posters on the walls, corpse of bird on the floor, a breaking wind screen and a reflection of myself, homeless man, abandoned houses etc, because I believe most of our memories are made up by imperfection things. We remembered clearly our failure in life, how hard the loved ones hurt us, the betray of a good friends. Imperfection have such impact to our life and our memories, It meant to be remembered, so that we will be careful when bad things returns. I have drifted from the topic I know, so lets come back. Because most of the content of my photographs are those imperfection, I want it to be expressed in the imperfect coarse surface paper. It coped well with my grainy black and white photographs. It fits well in a zine.

Yet another reason I love about zine, is they are cheap and simple to produce. Don't get me wrong that I like to do a lousy job. To me, I wanted to produce something right instead of something perfect. So that I can deliver to readers the exact emotions that hits me. The zine with a staple binding is cheap but it does gives a reasonable lay-flat 'quality' to all of the pages. This is important to me, because I love to arrange my photographs into a full bleed of crossing pages. The fold of two pages makes a good sense of space between reader and the photograph. By opening a zine with two hands left and right, it forms a cubical space between readers and the content. In that space, the objects in the photograph may somehow visually stand out. If you get what I mean, you will agree with me, it becomes 3D-ish somehow.

還有一個原因讓我愛上zine是它的瑕疵。你沒聽錯，是瑕疵。zine是不完美的。要把zine弄得完美是個很瘋狂的想法。我這樣說好了，最完美的zine是它本身不完美但你依然喜歡它。我喜歡拍攝有缺陷的東西，街上刮花了的牆，被撕爛的海報，躺在地上的鳥屍體，砸破了的車窗和反射出來畸形的自己，流浪漢，廢棄的屋子等等，因為我始終相信我們的記憶都是拼湊些不完美的片段。我們可以記得很清楚我們曾經的失敗，我們被誰傷害過，背叛自己的朋友。種種的不快樂不完美的回憶總是影響著我們，讓我們記住，讓我們警惕。不好意思，我離題了。因為我所拍的內容都是些不完美的東西，我想把它詮釋在不完美的粗面紙上.我那粗粒強的黑白照片很適合在粗面紙上，也很適合在zine上。

讓我喜歡上zine的另一個原因是，製作它們很簡單也很便宜。不要誤會，我不是只想亂搞一番。其實對於我來說，製作出對的感覺比完美更重要。我想讓讀者感受那種情緒，那種意境。釘裝書雖然簡單，但它有全開頁的好處。這對我很重要，我喜歡把一張照片排在兩頁全開的地方。兩頁全開和讀者之間形成了一種奇妙的空間感。當讀者兩手把頁面敞開，他們之間形成了立方空間，照片中的物體就會在視覺上變得立體起來。如果你懂我說什麼的話，你就會認同，影像好像變3D了。

"Home Town" is my debut zine, to be specific, a photo-zine. It consist of two books, part I and part II. Each of them 40 pages, full bleed of high contrast black and white photographs. This zine bundles the shots taken during days and nights strolling streets in my home town Penang, during year 2014 to 2016. I had printed them in total of 50 set, but only 40 will be on sale. The content are available for viewing at http://photobook.byexamples.com/#home-town, please buy it if you like it or curious on how the physical zine feels at your finger tip.

“Home Town" 是我的處女作，我的第一份攝影zine。它分成兩本，part I 和 part II。每一本40頁，所有照片都把頁面填滿。zine裡的照片從我每日每夜在街頭裡遊蕩所拍下的照片裡篩選出來，拍攝年間於2014-2016。我一共製作了50份，只賣40份。你可以在 http://photobook.byexamples.com/#home-town 網頁裡觀看zine的內容。如果你喜歡的話，或好奇它握在手上是怎樣的感覺的話，你也可以在網頁上購買。

Thanks for reading it. 謝謝觀賞。