Hamburger Eyes Zine Workshop

Fri., Sept. 26, 6-9 p.m., free, Megawords Storefront, 125 N. 11th St., megawordsmagazine.com.

by Drew Lazor

PHOTOGRAPHY/ZINES

A San Francisco-based photo magazine that's been around since 2001, Hamburger Eyes is bound on glossy card stock, full up with black and white, never-digi imagery addressing a loose, personal theme — "to tell the continuing story of life on Earth."

It's tallied up international nods within the photo and artistic communities. But Eyes didn't always possess such a high-end aesthetic: Co-founder Ray Potes started out as a zine kid, developing pictures in a homemade darkroom and running off Xeroxed pages behind his boss's back at Kinko's. The first four issues of Eyes were produced the same way. (Issue 13 is currently in the works.) "[Zines] are just so purposeful and so insignificant at the same time," says Potes, who started the mag with younger brother David and friend Stefan Simikich. "If yielded properly, [it's] a powerful combo."

That's why Potes is visiting Philly to run a zine-making workshop as part of Megawords' monthlong Storefront exhibition in Chinatown. "The idea is to be able to show people [how] easy and cheap it is to publish stuff," he says. "Sometimes, people just need to actually see someone do something to get motivated." Attendees are encouraged to bring along zine fodder, from articles to illustrations to photos. "As long as you can lay it on the glass, it should be good to go," Potes says. He'll go over the finer points of layout and rocking the copy machine right. And don't be surprised if he experiments with some unorthodox techniques ("I'm thinking of not bringing anything and just copying people's faces").

"I think people will always love zines," Potes adds. "It's one thing to scroll through blogs, but its another thing to pull something from a shelf and flip through it."

For more on Hamburger Eyes, visit burgerworldchronicles.com.

Fri., Sept. 26, 6-9 p.m., free, Megawords Storefront, 125 N. 11th St., megawordsmagazine.com.