Hours Zine

I got my copy of Hours Zine last week, complete with logo-stamped packaging.  The internet rocks for browsing through photos on sites like flickr and tumblr, but there's nothing quite like receiving a neatly packaged booklet through your door, laden with printed images in all their Technicolor glory.

Hours Zine, in case you've missed the local buzz about it, is a project by Molly Rooke and Matthew Shearer, two art graduates living in Cardiff.  They came up with the idea of documenting an entire day - 24 hours - with one film of an analogue camera, and road tested the idea last December on a cold but sunny day.  The results became the first issue, an unadultered visual diary of a daytrip around Barry Island, full of saccharine yet edgy images with colours that pop out at you from the zine's pages.

Like this one.

The plan is to give a camera to a different person each month, to be handed back at the end of the day, with every photo taken on the film printed in the next month's issue.

 The pictures aren't curated at all, and it is this randomness that is integral to the purpose of the zine. This is what makes it a proper celebration of analogue photography, with the photographer capturing off-guard moments that they can't then delete or correct.  By publishing the pictures instead of circulating them online, it also means that print is being celebrated; another format which is being succeeded by digital.

The zines cost just £1 each (although I believe I may have gotten one of the last copies of issue one - there are only 100 of each issue available!) and can be bought from here, or at the monthly launch party.  The next one is for issue three and is at Buffalo Lounge on the 23rd of March.

If you want to spend a day shooting for Hours, email your name to hourszine@gmail.com.

If you want to make your own zine, watch this illustrative video (via Hours Tumblr).

how to make a zine from nicki sabalu on Vimeo.

More inspiring than Blue Peter and Art Attack combined!

(Image 2: Hours Zine)

Sartorial Seoul

Scott Schuman from The Sartorialist (the original street photographer/ blogger extraordinaire) has recently been in Seoul, South Korea shooting some trendy locals.

I like to think that he was inspired to visit after reading my rambling posts about maybe going out there.

People don't know much about South Korea that isn't gleaned from sensationalised Western news stories about the 'war' with the North.  It's actually an incredibly advanced country which is doing better than Britain economically (although who isn't?) and is very up-and-coming in terms of fashion and street style.  I'll be proving this to you in blog form when I finally go there to live (please please please).

 (FYI, The Sartorialist also regularly documents his obsession with hipsters on bikes - a guilty pleasure I share with him as a fashion fanatic and vintage bike lover.)

(Images: The Sartorialist).

Street Photography

I came across these incredible pictures taken by Vivian Maier, a street photographer who snapped various subjects in the 50's, 60's and 70's, predominantly in Chicago.

The pictures are very alluring, due mostly to the precise framing which is contrapuntal to the candid nature of the shots.  They allow the viewer to gain an introspective gaze into historical American society due to the different array of settings Maier shoots. Her artistic is eye is phenomenal, as is the fact that she barely printed any of the 100,000 negatives she took in her lifetime

These pictures could have been thrown out completely had John Maloof (also from Chicago) not picked them up at an auction.  He tried to locate the photographer, but after researching found an obituary stating that she had died two days previously.

Sad to think that she never saw most of her images in their developed state.

(Images courtesy of www.vivianmaier.com, Maloof's blog on the discovery of the photographs.  Go check out more of her work.)