“but i digress” is an ongoing series of zines that
combines my writing, photography, and design
practices to create short meditations on memory,
nostalgia, and the passage of time. Currently there
are two issues of “but i digress” and I intend to create
more as I continue to look through my photo archives.

Each zine is made of a single folded sheet of paper.
This series of work revolves around memory (and
how unreliable it can often be), nostalgia, and the
passage of time, and aims to simulate that in a tactile
sense as well.

The inner pages of the zine are printed
in single-colour risograph ink, so that they too would
fade and slowly come apart in your hands as you went
through the zine. This denotes the ease with which
we forget things as time passes, and how things often
slip and blur in our own memories — which is what
the writing in the zine, accompanied by seemingly
detached fragments of a larger whole (of which some
parts are also missing) is meant to signify.
However, when the zine is unfolded fully, its
underside reveals the full photo from which these
fragments are taken, and which the writing alludes to.

The juxtaposition of full-colour Xerox printing
against single-colour risograph was meant to signify
the two different modes I was thinking about memory
in — I was trying so hard not to fall into the trap that
my own nostalgia was setting for me, but at the same
time, life is just miserable if you don’t cherish the good
memories you’ve accumulated.

The title of the series, “but i digress,” is a reference
to the line I use in the writing pieces that switches
the narrative tone halfway through, from waxing
nostalgic, to more sombre thoughts on where I was
then versus where I am now.