Highlights from Our Lower East Side Zine Workshop

Thank you to those who turned out for our zine workshop in celebration of Lower East Side History Month! Alongside 8-Ball Community and Photographer's Green Book, the two-day workshop honored community histories of New York City’s Lower East Side, in partnership with FABnyc.

Lower East Side community members of all ages visited our tables during Open Arts LES to make handmade zines that tell underrepresented stories of the neighborhood’s history. Participants explored questions like: What about your neighborhood brings you joy? How do we value and respond to the history of a place while it faces social and political changes? How do we engage with histories that weren't photographed? What are some things that people don't know about where you live? What could an archive of the future look like?

The workshops provided xeroxed archival images collected from Lower East Side community groups for participants to cut up and collage into their own unique creations. Participants also brought their own photos and visual archives to add to their zines.

Magnum Foundation intern Samaira Wilson offered her reflection on the experience, sharing that "the zines themselves came together as a community archive and every contributor became the archivist. Their individual ideas around picturing the present, countering history and honoring the history of the Lower East Side melded to make an archive of today."

Check out photos from the event below — all images by Tif Ng.