“Photographic Memories” is a collection of illustrations, writing, and memories related to photography.

It’s a quarter-page zine and 20 pages, which makes this the largest and longest zine I’ve made to date! The zine is printed in black and white and mostly hand-made with some digital elements.

A zine titled Photographic Memories features a design with film strips and vintage camera illustrations.

It took me a while to make this zine. I knew I wanted to focus on photography, but beyond that, I didn’t know what to include. I knew I didn’t want it to be a how-to guide or lessons on photography. You can google all that and nothing I make would be as extensive or informative.

Instead, I thought about things that stuck with me—concepts and memories—and that’s what I made pages about. Here are some previews:

A page of the zine that looks like a notebook page with a list of qualities for photographers. The adjacent page shows photos of trees and their reflection in water. A sketch shows an an MP3 player with text expressing concern about its impact on prints and learning the controls by touch. A whimsical drawing illustrates the hazards of amusement park photography, including thunderstorms, sunburn, angry geese, and kids with squirt guns. Two copies of Photographic Memories. One copy shows the front cover, and the other copy shows the back cover.

I made each page individually and then laid out pages by hand. The original pages look like this:

Pages of the zine with drawings and handwritten notes. Small sticky notes denote page numbers.

I used sticky notes to label each page, so I wouldn’t lose track of what goes where. I scanned pages, added some white space as buffer, and then printed copies.

I learned a lot by making this zine in a larger and longer format than I’ve done before. I already have plans for my next zine. It probably won’t be as long but it’ll be the same page size.