Suburban Dream, zine release.

Untitled, Suburban Dream.

I recently completed another photo zine on the topic of dreams and the subconscious. It's something I've been working on for years, with the edit evolving and changing each time I review it. It's perennially unfinished, but I wanted to lay out a version of it, which has taken on the form of this zine.

In the series I look at everyday moments and ask what they might reveal about human behaviour, or our deeper selves. I'm especially interested in the seemingly insignificant moments that affect most of us every day while living a suburban existence, but which go by unnoticed. Suburbia is at once overly familiar to many of us, and yet a site of obscured truths and meaning. 

I’ve been collecting these seemingly disparate images of mine, both mentally and literally, for decades. Last year (2020) I edited and re-organised for the 100th time into a sequence that I thought felt right for a zine. I had the zine printed and prepared towards the end of 2020 and have sat on it for a bit, waiting for the right time to release it. 

I expect I have dithered with the release because it feels a little exposing, even though the character of the zine is not necessarily autobiographical, but it’s certainly my most personal work to date. The zine is a collection of my thoughts around dreams, following a character through different dream states which I have summarised as reverie, nightmare, escape, redemption, loss and longing.

I know it is a slight departure from previous zines that I have released, which have been more focussed in their subject matter, which is probably another reason why I have delayed release. I suppose I keep wondering, is anyone going to get this? And all those old familiar doubts about the worth of the work, whether it serves any purpose and so on - the nagging doubt that (I imagine) plagues anyone on a creative pursuit. 

I’ve limited it to fifty copies, each with an original C-type print. It can be bought here. I’ve created another page with further thoughts about the project and some additional images. 

Take a look and please let me know any of your thoughts. I’ve not made any of the images available as prints (see my last blog post on this topic!) but if there’s any you’re interested in as prints drop me a line and I’ll add them to the shop.