Making and launching “From Here: Issue 02”

The second issue of From Here is out 🎉

Making process

Following Gaétan’s great idea from our first issue launch gathering, our theme for the second issue was a color hunt. All of us hunted for color in our daily lives here in the Netherlands, matching the colors from the first issue’s book binding: red, yellow, green, pink, brown, blue.

As I received each color set from everyone, I felt an immediate urge to mix and match all these photos across different colors. That idea drove the format of the second issue. I wanted each photo to feel like a puzzle piece — something each zine reader could lay out on a surface and play with, combining different photos together. I printed each photo on card-sized matte paper with some thickness, then created a folder for each color set, matching its color.

Here’s a short recording of the making process:

Some challenges along the way:

• I initially considered using a printing service for each image, with a specific paper size and thickness, but at the volume I needed, the cost was too much to bear… so I decided to print at home.
• There weren’t many home-printing paper options that matched the size, thickness, and budget I needed. Luckily, I found something that fit my criteria pretty well, though since it’s matte paper, the colors came out slightly duller than in the actual photos.
• For the folders, I worked with A3-sized paper (29.7 cm x 42 cm). From my experience making issue 01, I knew measuring and cutting paper was very time-consuming, and issue 02’s format required even more of it. So, as an investment, I bought a heavy-duty paper cutter that can cut through hundreds of sheets at once and handle A3 size….but it turned out that the longer side of A3 just didn’t fit 🥲 I’d hoped to use the machine for all the cutting to get more precision, but I still had to do a fair amount by hand. Still, the process was so much faster thanks to the machine.

Each box contains 15 color sets: 4 red, 4 green, 1 blue, 2 pink, 2 yellow, and 2 brown. Each set reflects a color captured uniquely through each person’s own eyes and experiences in the city.

All these color sets together, voilà, created this lovely rainbow, arriving at perfect timing with Pride month! 🌈

A short contemplation on color psychology

My color was red. During the color hunt, I thought a lot about what each color is often associated with in our day-to-day lives here.

We can never know what was going through our ancestors’ minds, tens of thousands of years ago, when they first picked up natural crayons and began painting their bodies. But it is perhaps significant that they chose a rich, red ochre – the colour of our blood and a vivid reminder of life, and death. 

Today, shades of scarlet are linked with power, aggression, and sex – from the vermilion of the British Queen’s royal regalia to the gaudy neon of Amsterdam’s red–light district. And those associations may not be coincidence. A new branch of science called “colour psychology” has found that red can have a profound influence on our mood, perceptions and actions. Wearing red can even change your physiology and balance of hormones and alter your performance in a football match.

— “How the colour red warps the mind” by David Robson (BBC)

As I started hunting for it, I quickly noticed that in an urban setting, red is everywhere as a tool of control: you shouldn’t do this, you’re not allowed to do that, you need to follow this! It is often used to stimulate, create urgency, draw attention, and warn.

So I tried to capture red in a more positive or neutral context.

I wanted to photograph red lips or red nails because, if I recall how I feel whenever I choose to wear red lipstick or red nail polish, that feeling really encapsulates the strong emotion red can conjure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture those in time. Perhaps it can be my future self-portrait series!

Get together, share the experience

We organized two gatherings to accommodate everyone’s availability. The first was at my place, since there were only six of us, and people said they loved the cozy, homey feel. The second was at Stadscafé van Mechelen, for ten of us.

While processing everyone’s photos, it struck me how approaching something with a very specific angle shapes what we end up seeing, and I loved tracing each person’s color through their own curation.That idea — how searching for a specific color shapes what we see — also came up in some of our conversations as we went through each set together.

Some notes from our conversation:

• Joana was hunting green, and she realized it was mostly found in nature. Since it was June, the greenery was especially prominent, so she decided to find green outside of nature.
• Summer’s experience was interesting: when we think of hunting a color, we usually expect it to pop as an accent. She tried to capture brown that way, but noticed it actually showed up mostly in the background.
• I thought it would be difficult to find pink, but Queena proved me wrong, beautifully capturing pink in our daily lives, while Stevanna captured a beautiful pink sunset sky in Amsterdam.
• Vince was hunting blue, trying to capture it in the most quintessentially Dutch settings.
• Michelle was hunting red, but specifically red in food, following her passion for cooking.
• Gaétan followed his passion as well — for yellow! Since it’s his favorite color and he loves its joyfulness, capturing it felt effortless. The real challenge wasn’t finding yellow, but deciding which yellow to submit.
• Velika took a more unconventional approach. Instead of consciously hunting green, she just took photos as she normally would over a couple of weeks, then looked back and picked out the ones that fit the theme. She probably also benefited from the seasonal effect of a very green June!
• Herman and Joana both shared the experience of missing “decisive moments” — the perfect color scene happening in front of their eyes but they just couldn’t capture it, like something seen for a fleeting second while cycling. I resonate with that completely: the pity of missing a moment that looked so perfect to my eyes as well as the pure happiness of actually catching one!

Closing thoughts

It was another wholesome experience launching the second issue! So many people loved seeing a format so different from the first issue, and their appreciation for how much time and care went into this zine filled my heart.

Just like with the first issue’s launch, it was wonderful watching everyone sit together, share their experiences openly, and listen to one another. 🙏🏻

That’s a wrap!

Due to personal circumstances, the third issue will launch next year, in January 2027. But we already have a topic in mind, and I truly believe issue three will be a great opportunity for everyone to be as creative as they want. We have months ahead of us to experiment, and that makes me very excited!