A Winter's tale

in form of a little zine

Dec 14, 2023

Last week we were fortunate enough to get a bit of snow in Hamburg. Usually when it snows here, it disappears as fast as it came. If we are lucky it stays for one or two days before the temperatures rise and the white wonderland turns into a grey muddy mess again.

Last week it snowed for four days in a row and the temperature stayed below freezing point for over a week. Which was really exciting for me, because I love snow. I love how snow makes the world look so different. I want to believe it sounds different then too. More quiet. More peaceful. The only sound which breaks this quiet seems to be the sound of the snow when I walk. A beautiful sound… Crunch, crunch, crunch…

The past few weeks were grey and rainy here, the beautiful fall colours only remaining as a fading memory. And although I love bare trees, dried flowers and all the greys and browns nature holds this time of year, I found myself a little uninspired working on my long-term project, photographing my local park.

But as I watched the snowflakes falling, turning the grass in front of my window into a beautiful white winter wonderland my enthusiasm and excitement to go out and photograph returned. So much so, that I really couldn’t wait for the darkness to vanish in the morning, so I could go on my daily walk. It is amazing how different everything looks under a white blanket of snow. Every day I came home with a series of new photographs. I usually don’t look at the photos for this project right away, but I couldn't resist my curiosity.

I even got so excited, that I felt the urge to create a little handmade zine to celebrate this beautiful “event”. The zine isn’t really anything fancy: simple prints from my small portable printer and a bunch of different papers I had lying around in my studio which I hand-stitched together. All done in one session in the afternoon.

I enjoyed the process of making it so much: printing the chosen photographs, picking the papers for the pages, looking for a quote to go with it, pairing and sequencing the photographs, using needle and thread to stitch everything together. Of course, I could have done this all digitally and having a clean, pretty and perfect-looking zine, but that wouldn’t have satisfied me in the same way. I love holding it in my hand, flipping its imperfect pages and looking at the not-so-perfectly printed photos.

I am not sharing this with you, because I want to show you, what an amazing thing I have created (because it really isn’t), but to encourage you to do the same. Many of you, who read my newsletter on a regular basis, have shared with me their interest in working on little projects themselves.

I wanted to share this little zine with you, to show you that you don’t need an elaborate concept or a big selection of photographs to choose from. You don’t have to work on it for weeks or months. You don’t have to go to a fancy place to photograph. And you certainly don’t need high quality materials to create something with meaning for you and something that makes you happy.

Here are a few pages of my little zine in digital form, in case you want to have a closer look at the photographs.

“Snow was falling, so much like stars

filling the dark trees

that one could easily imagine

its reason for being

was nothing more than prettiness.”

- Mary Oliver

Creating something like a zine or a little photo book can be intimidating, especially if you are a perfectionist like me. But I want to encourage you to try it anyway. It is so rewarding. And if you feel like sharing your creation with me, feel free to send me an e-mail (susanneh@substack.com). I would love to see what you create.

And if you need more inspiration, here are a few other projects I worked on this year:

That’s it from me today.

Thank you for being here and for reading this week’s newsletter. It means a lot to me!

Susanne

If you enjoyed this weeks newsletter, I would love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in the comments with me.

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