Christian Mackie’s Photography Zines

Christian Mackie is my coworker at Shopify. He’s also a prolific photographer, and one I admire because of how he is able to package his work.

I first encountered his work when he shared his Japan 4x6 project, “An experimental online gallery that mimics the experience of sequencing physical 4x6 prints on a tabletop.” It reminded me of Daniel Arnold’s fun Image Database project/site/thing and was equally a joy to explore and play with.

So when I discovered that Christian had printed a couple zines of his photos, I immediately ordered both.

Where Are We Going is a clean and simple assembly of people using printed maps. It’s a good execution of a pattern. I love the blank page for “Notes” in the back. I wish the big dot on the cover was red - to mimic the “You are Here” dot on maps. One of my favorite bits as I flipped through a second time was finding the images where people had powerful technology in hand (smartphones, etc.) and yet they were navigating with the paper map instead. Love to see it.

We Find What We Like is a more personal collection - juxtapositions of Christian’s first years in the UK. I love the juxtaposition trope in photo edits. I actually enjoyed this assembly quite a bit because I didn’t immediately understand why a few of the pairings were made. So I lingered for a bit longer on them and ended up attributing them to Christian’s own memories - something just before the shutter fire or just out of frame - that married them in his mind.

I’m collecting quite a few zines lately. Personal ones like these are the best.