Our 9th installment of Zinesters in LCF Special Collections comes from Rudy Loewe, their zine Conversations on Our Hair can be found in our zine collection.
Name and location…
My name is Rudy Loewe and I currently live in Stockholm, Sweden.
How long have you been making zines for?
I have been making zines mostly over the last five years. I was making them before that, but it’s since then that I have been more into it and selling them at zine fairs.
What do you like to create zines about?
My zines are mostly about topics such as race and racism, black history, sexuality, gender and mental health. I am interested in the ways that important subjects can be explored through making zines. I think that as a format they are very accessible and can be shared in lots of different spaces, which is what makes them so useful. I like to think about zines as a way of getting these conversations to happen in different places.
What is your favourite zine/comic/book?
Some of my favourite zines are Shotgun Seamstress, OOMK, Fix My Head, White Boys. I like zines that centre the experiences of people of colour, queers, femmes, mental health and disability. I love zines that inspire me, heal my heart and become resources that I can share with other people.
Tell us a bit more about your creative process…
I mostly work as a comic artist and so spend most of my artistic practice drawing. I also think of the ideas in my work as a crucial element of what I am trying to say, so I read a lot – about theory, history and different life experiences. Sometimes I have something specific I want to explore and talk about and so I might research for that particular topic and then the zine becomes the product of that research.
What does it feel like to have your zine/s in the London College of Fashion Library’s Special Collections?
Often zines can be very ephemeral – small print runs and stapled binding – which means that they can become forgotten parts of history. But zine culture/ communities have such a rich history that needs documenting. So I think it’s very important to have as many zines as possible in special collections and archives. I’m glad that some of my work can be documented in this way, I have other works in other archives, which is important to me too. I often work with archives and I consider them to be very valuable spaces.
What influenced Conversations on Our Hair?
That zine came out of the various conversations I was having with other queer black people about our hair. There aren’t very many resources available to have these kinds of dialogues with other black people, apart from online forums or in person. I wanted to create another space for the conversation to take place.
What one piece of advice would you give UAL students about zine making?
Make zines about the things you are passionate about and create the space that you want to exist. Zines have always been a way for people to connect with other like minded people. Think about who you are trying to connect to.