Publishing a Zine

March 2021

This is my first ever Zine - a small print run, magazine style, publication.

It’s a document of a personal project that I was doing during the first UK Lockdown, where I took a photo at 2pm every day. It runs from the 23rd of March 2020 (the first official day of lockdown, one year ago) through to 3 of July 2020, the last official day of of the first UK lockdown.

The first photo was always the front of my house, which is actually the courtyard / garden / exercise yard of my home in Brixton, South London and the second was a reaction to whatever was happening in the house at that time - most often, eating lunch or my son Noah doing virtual schoolwork.

It stemmed from boredom and obviously not having anything to photograph professionally, and was initially an intrusion into my families personal space. But as with many long term project I eventually won over the trust of my subjects and they either ignored me or took part by allowing me in. The good news was that it was over quickly every day, the bad news was that the camera - my iPhone XR - would be out again in 24 hours.

Collating the photos into a book really gave me a sense of time and seasons passing, no repeated ‘front of house’ shot was ever the same. Documenting the subtle eb and flow of family life - restricted to confinement and boredom - was a nice barometer of our changing moods, fears and lunch choices.

Was your lockdown as boring as mine?

**** EXTRA ****

This Zine has had quite a good response so I have done a second (small) print run and will be selling the 216 page soft back book. Please drop me an email / text / DM if you are interested in getting one. They are gonna be £20 + postage.

**** MORE ****

There is now also a longer interview that Elizabeth Smith did with me talking about my Lockdown Zine as well as other projects, in the Personal Work Journal here.