Over the past few weeks or months, I’ve noticed more and more people in the photography community sharing their zine experiments online. Last week alone both Rick and I published posts about it. Some are elaborate, beautifully printed things. Others are rougher, more personal, made on kitchen tables when the kids are in bed. What they share is the same restless energy, the same feeling that putting images into a physical object changes how you see them. It gave us an idea.
Rick and I got talking, and somewhere in that discussion the idea of a proper exchange club took shape. Not just sharing pictures or electronic documents, but making something and sending it to another person who has made something in return. The tactile part matters. A file on a screen and a folded piece of paper you can hold are different experiences, and the difference is enjoyed by many.
The Postcard Exchange Club is working pretty well for a small community of participants. Every couple of months, users create postcards from their photos, and send them to strangers in exchange for one of their postcards. So why not apply the same principle to photography zines?
We discussed various ideas and issues: what if someone makes a really fancy, very large zine, and in exchange receives a small folded one? Would they be annoyed? What about postage costs? Across the planet they could be very large and disparate among countries, which would create another imbalance.
We settled on folded zines to start with specifically because we wanted everyone starting from roughly the same place. There’s no barrier of expensive printing or elaborate binding. A single sheet of paper, folded the right way, becomes an booklet. That’s it. The constraint is interesting rather than limiting, and for anyone who hasn’t made one before, the learning curve is measured in minutes rather than weeks.
If you search for folded zine templates you’ll find several solid options, from simple printable PDFs to dedicated web applications that let you arrange images and text before you print. Corebook and Newspaper Club have useful resources, and there are free Canva templates that work perfectly well. The format is forgiving and the tools are accessible. For example:
We also settled on trying to pair users by distance to try to minimise postage costs differences. It might not work very well, but the algorithm will the countries into account.
To make the whole thing actually work as a proper club rather than a loose idea, I built a dedicated website to manage the process. You’ll find everything there, including how rounds work, how exchanges are matched, and how to sign up. It’s at zineexchangeclub.org.
Anyone can join. Rick and I want this to be as open as possible, whether you’ve been making zines for years or you’re about to fold your first sheet of paper. The more the merrier, and frankly the more interesting the exchanges will be.
#Photography #Zine #ZineExchange