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Vice Blog

SWITZERLAND - TALK ABOUT WORDS AND PICTURES


You already know the quest for the emporium of zines ends at Printed Matter, an extremely picky guild whose selection ranges from a $1,000 box of found objects, lyrics, sewing patterns, essays, recordings, drawings, and gay coloring book illustrations to publications small enough to fit up a Smurf's ass. Their application process is so tough they even rejected Swiss-based zine publisher Nieves' first batch of submissions. Publisher Benjamin Sommerhalder still vividly remembers how heartbreaking that was for him back in the days but now, after eight years and shitloads of zines he's published, he put together his first exhibiton there. We called him up and talked to him about ghosts, marriages, and pockets.

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Vice: Hey Benjamin, how are you? Did you read any newspaper today?
Benjamin Sommerhalder: Ahem, nope. I don't really read the paper.

What?

Well, all this news stuff is pretty boring because nothing lasts and it feels like the same things are happening over and over again.

That sounds almost kind of philosophical… So you think with zines that's different?

Definitely! Newspapers end up as something you'd pick up dogshit with. Zines are rare. Some are worth hundreds of dollars and they are always something very special because the artist/photographers/etc. put so many thoughts and work into every little detail.

Tell us a little about Nieves.

In the early days, around 2001, a friend of mine and I started our own magazine called Zoo. I probably don't need to tell you how tough this magazine business is, and as we had a pretty small circulation we were broke pretty soon. Then we thought, What's next? Maybe we should start to publish zines of photographers, artists, and all those people who are doing their zines on their desks at home. When Nieves started out, everything was pretty chaotic because none of us had an idea of how to run a publishing house. In 2004 there were almost no independent publishing houses like that around anymore.

Right, but that was nothing totally new…

Sure, I picked up the idea when I was visiting a friend in Tokyo. I went to the store of a self-publishing house and bought my first zine there. Somehow I fell for that. Please don't ask me which artist did this zine or what it was about. I just remember that it was some kind of art zIne. I still have it somewhere in my collection. The new thing was that it was not the artist itself who published it, it was a small publishing house.

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I'm sure there's a little story that goes with every zine you have, please tell us one …

I love the story of "Do You Wanna Marry Me?" by Linus Bill, who is a Swiss-based photographer. I've work with him for a while now and published his first zine in 2006. He assembled this zine to propose to his girlfriend. The photos are very private and personal.

I saw it in the exhibition and it is sold out already. How did this Swiss-American connection happen?

That was not so easy. In the beginning I had to write tons of applications and they rejected our zines for about a year. I forgot the details about this struggle but it was quite frustrating. They asked for a certain number of copies and focused on a certain style. I don't know how they do it today but when I put out my zines there, it was a lot of fun.

What is the Nieves ghost icon all about? Do you believe in ghosts?

Ha, ha. No, that is just a drawing I did when we started Nieves. We liked it so we stuck to it.

What zine you have in your bag right now?

I don't carry zines around with me because I don't want to damage them.

Here are some pictures of the exhibition:

From the outside …

… and the inside. It might look a bit boring cause it is just zines in paper on a wall, but as soon as you take them down and flip through them you find things like this …


Tim Barber, Highschool


Dr. Roland Korg / P.A.M., They're Already Here
Stella 3
Zoo magazine

MARTINA KIX