polaroid hand zine final-2ilmurs
Concept:
When presented with the idea of a zine about identity, I started thinking about what visually could represent me as a whole. I came to the conclusion to use my polaroids. Since 2015 when I got my Instax camera, I have taken polaroid photos periodically of me, my friends, family, events I attend, my bedroom, etc. They have become a visual diary of my teenage life. I then went through my books of polaroids and chose the ones I felt were the most important to me. I used mostly photos with my friends and then one with my sister because they are such an important part of my life. They influence my humor, they accompany me to life-changing events. I chose a spread of years so you can see how much my appearance changes. I feel like I never look the same, and not just because I dye my hair sometimes. The cover of the zine is the actual cover of my polaroid book (plus an edited title). The book itself is characteristic of my interests/life. The In-and-Out sticker reminds me of my trips to Austin for ACL Music Festival with my family and best friend Stella. “Big Titty and the Big Titties” is a local band my college friends and I have met and go to their shows, so it’s representative of my college life and interest in music. The Glossier sticker was for the longest time my reminder that I’d someday return to New York (there’s no Glossier store in Houston). The mermaid is part of a set of stickers I put on everything from my guitar case to my phone. I decided to include my hands in the images to add an element of visual interest and to make sure a physical part of me was visible. My hands are what I use to create art and play music so they seemed the appropriate part of me to feature.
Reflection:
I enjoyed looking through the photos I take on a regular basis and seeing which ones felt the most representative of me. Originally, I chose too many, so then I had to pare it down to 8 so the format would be clean. I was glad to get feedback in class about the zine because it pushed me to do the final version that showed my hands and the cover, which I think really completed the representation of my identity.
Process:
First I went through my books to choose the polaroids I wanted to use.
The first version of the zine was the polaroids alone, folded so one showed on each page:
Then, I decided to use my hands and to use the cover of my book plus the little Hello Kitty envelope I keep fresh polaroids in until I get home. This is a scan before I edited it. The pieces of paper were to make sure the scanner kept scanning because otherwise it would stop halfway through when it thought it got the whole image.
It took a few tries to figure out the formatting of the zine. Here is one that didn’t work: