Cover images taken with an iPhone 4S (Manila, 2015)
Zen 101 Zine is a bilingual homage to Japanese zen philosophy. It visually narrates seven zen principles for design practices. The principles allude to beauty, imperfection, and simplicity, among other things. In other words, the natural state of things.
Unedited images taken with an iPhone 4S (Manila, 2015)
Zen 101 cover and page spreads (revised in 2023)
Synonymous to the aestheticality of zen, the zine interweaves photographs (taken on 2015 with an iPhone 4S) of aquatic life along a coast. The images taken in an aquarium, a pond, and a coastline seem to follow the zen narrative, but in fact, dives in parallel with the ecological impact of the human pursuit of zen.
Clownfish and Anemone (raw photos taken with iPhone 4S, Manila, 2015)
School of Fish (raw photo taken with iPhone 4S, Manila, 2015)
Sea Worm (unedited photo taken with iPhone 4S + fish eye lens, Manila, 2015)
The photographic book was originally conceived as a photofolio back in 2014. Almost a decade later, it has been contemporized as a zine. The parallelism of seven zen principles was added to give structure. The photographs were re-curated to match the new visual direction of the topic at hand.
The text is written by Faena Aleph with the observations of Matthew May. Japanese translations provided via DeepL.
Credits
Photographer: Byron Co
Graphic Designer & Art Director: Byron Co
Text by: Faena Aleph
Font in use: PingFang HK