For my final intervention, I made a zine in regards to lineage. My initial idea for this zine was to collect family archives and interviews from people who weren't born in America but unfortunately..... everyone SLACKED last minute. Literally. One person was able to send me some of their photos so I'm planning to make this zine later when I have enough people to use for it.
But anyways, after that disappointment I sat with myself and tried to come up with something that wasn't fully about me and my family as I'm not an immigrant so I wouldn't be able to understand and/or touch base on the struggles of immigrating. I decided to make this project about my lineage and the people in my life that have been affected by being from a different country. This idea was manifested into a zine that brings light to my loved ones that have done so much for me to be where I am now.
My message to the audience is to bring light to culture. I want the person who sees my zine to feel that they, too, can be completely okay with where they come from or better yet, be proud of their heritage. Since I've wasted many years of my life being ashamed in who I was, I want to be able to elevate those who feel lesser of themselves.
To boost this project and get people on board, I went online and asked my followers or anyone who was interested to send me any old photos of their family as well as some anecdotes of their history. Like I said earlier, not many people got back to me but the ones that did sent me some photos of their family as well as some fashion references from their country.
As someone who's trying to get into the photography industry, I chose to do a zine to 1. show the skills I have in layouts and utilizing graphic softwares and 2. use this as an ode to archival research. My goal is to make different volumes for this and HOPEFULLY for my next zine people won't slack on me. </3
For the zine, my mom and I found a bunch of photos from my family's photo album and picked out our favorite ones. As I added them to my layout, I asked my mom about these photos and when/where they were taken. I WANTED to record the process but my mom was camera shy.
One thing I noticed while looking through photos with her was that she seemed sad when remembering her past. One thing they don't mention when you're moving away from home is that you start to lose the people you left behind. Whether it's by drifting apart, losing contact or passing away, when you leave home, you leave everything. This always comes to mind for me when I think about how my family managed to go from two countries from opposite sides of the world to New Jersey.
Something (or someone) that inspired me to make this project was the Guerillas girls. They advocated for equal rights for the LGBT+ as well as POC in New York and I wanted to create a collection that can be in the same boat as their zines.
A quote I took from the textbook that resonated with me while creating this was in Chapter 1 where it states, "We are beholden to a powerful story, and imagine ourselves to be part of it: it is the story of The Power of The Truth." To me, this quote means that in order to be our truest selves, we must accept our narrative and who we are.
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