Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

Joseph (Beyond the Dream Syndicate), a professor of modern art at Columbia University, and Whitney Museum curator Sawyer team up for an excellent, photo-rich companion volume to the Brooklyn Museum exhibit of the same name. Popularized in the 1970s as “a quickly produced, low-cost publication intended for relatively limited distribution” and usually generated by copy machine, zines often represented communities on the margins of mainstream media. For example, punk rock publications of the ’70s and ’80s were fueled by a “do-it-yourself ethos” that reflected the music’s fascination with “violence and abjection,” while queer zines in the ’80s and ’90s helped disseminate information on homophobia, sexism, and HIV/AIDS, with “a healthy dose of satire.” Moving methodically from early zines that drew on “mail art networks” for material to contemporary zine fairs that have opened up “new levels of visibility,” the authors highlight the form’s nostalgic cachet, as well as its surprising popularity in the internet age, which they attribute partly to offering “physical relations with viewers and readers... and a sense of intimacy that rarely exists in online spaces.” Enriched by concise biographies of 100 artists (some famous and others obscure) and a wealth of images, this masterfully brings a lesser-explored vein of popular culture to light. Photos. (Feb.)