Blog for my small press publishing module.
I would explore changing attitudes towards disability and the rise of thinly veiled eugenics in lockdown in a DIY zine format with newspaper clippings and lockdown photographs that highlight loneliness.
KEYWORDS:
-Shielding
-(Thinly veiled) eugenics
-Survival of the fittest attitudes increase
-Underlying health conditions
-Clinically vulnerable
–1 in 6 disabled deaths
-vaccines/antivaxers
book object review
Made independently by writer Jen Hofer with an unnamed small press. This geographical small press object is very unique and delicate, it recounts a trip to various mountainous regions. The paper that the descriptions were printed on smells crisp but the map is a bit dusty showing it’s age. She describes 13 different places around the Arizona Utah borderland area that she wishes she could photograph to share with her loved ones and cement that moment.
She uses these relevant local boarder maps to bind her poetic descriptions of each place together. When the book is laid flat and open you can see glimpses of the map trim, as demonstrated by this photo below.
They are fragile but useful as you can trace her trip. They are printed on thin, cheap paper to save costs and are written in Courier M which is a standard font often used for film scripts. Hoffer’s specific choice of font evokes an image of her typewriting at a desk, recounting her experiences after her trip. It also implies she wanted her descriptions to create a cinematic depiction in people’s minds. Based on her website she now works in photography but it is unclear why she didn’t photograph them at the time.
Maybe she did not have the appropriate night camera with her to depict the stats or felt the trip with her dad could be better captured through writing as she wasn’t an experienced photographer at the time.
Disabled people do not owe you their entire, often traumatic medical history, especially if you’re a stranger on the bus or waiting behind one of us in a shop queue . We are not broken and don’t need fixing so stop asking acquaintances and passers by what’s wrong with you? That repeated question from people I barely knew chipped away at the bones of my self esteem for years. When you are told your existence is wrong you start to believe that it is inherently wrong.
Many non disabled people assume the hardest part of being disabled is the disability itself. In reality it’s society’s twisted and archaic view of disability. The othering, the piercing stares, the way we are infantilised in the media and trodden on by the government. We do not wheel down the the street to be your educational disability encyclopaedia, read, and learn from the life’s work of pioneering disability advocates who decided to become educators. You can’t make history in grand halls you cannot enter, Oxbridge isn’t a option when you have been physical barred from even dreaming of it. It’s jarring when the historic steps of grade two listed buildings matter more to elite society than whether we can enter them.
Stop asking us what’s wrong with you and start examining!
Fran's press publishing