FLUX Weekly Witness #5 — Mini Zines, Visual Diaries & Building a World Through Photography
Yo, what’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.
Welcome to FLUX Weekly Witness number 4, where I look at the photographs submitted inside the FLUX community, talk about updates, projects, ideas, and whatever else has been happening around the system lately.
This week has honestly been packed.
The biggest update is that the FLUX website now has a Dispatches tab, and inside that tab is the brand-new mini-zine generator.
The FLUX Dispatches Mini-Zine Generator
The mini-zine generator lets you create small zines with:
- 6 photographs
- A custom title
- A unique URL
- A QR code on the back
- Exportable PDF layouts
And now it supports both:
- US Letter
- A4 paper
The idea is simple.
You drag in 6 frames, give the work a title, hit export, print it out, fold it, staple it, and suddenly you’ve got a tiny physical object in your hands.
Not luxury.
Not precious.
Just something real.
“I’m trying to build a world around FLUX.”
That’s really what this all is.
Not just photographs.
A system.
A rhythm.
A philosophy.
A visual archive.
The Aesthetic of Bureaucracy
One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is using the aesthetics of bureaucracy inside these projects.
The final FLUX zines are always presented in manila folders.
Staple marks exposed.
Blank documents.
Cold administrative aesthetics.
But inside those bureaucratic objects are poetic street photographs.
Human moments.
Beauty.
Chaos.
Emotion.
That contrast matters to me.
There’s tension there.
When you walk around a city, people are constantly carrying these folders into offices and buildings. These systems surround us every day. I think there’s something powerful about taking those visual forms and repurposing them for photography.
Constraints Create Creativity
Every FLUX zine uses 36 frames.
That’s intentional.
It’s an homage to 35mm film, but it’s also a creative limitation.
I believe constraints force creativity.
And lately I’ve been debating whether to add a 24-frame option.
Still not sure.
Part of me likes the rigidity of one standard.
36 feels substantial.
But I also understand it can feel intimidating for people who don’t shoot at a high volume.
The important thing is this:
Don’t rush it.
If your zine takes:
- one day
- one week
- one month
- two months
that’s fine.
Follow your own rhythm.
The Reading Terminal Rush Project
READING TERMINAL RUSH 001
2026-05-22 · Philadelphia · Dante Sisofo + Sai Min Htet Oo
Sai Min Htet Oo
https://www.saiminhtetoo.com/
One market. One hour. Two photographers. Thirty-six photographs total.
Dante Sisofo and Sai Min Htet Oo enter Reading Terminal Market simultaneously during lunch rush and immediately separate.
No coordination.
No communication.
No image review during the session.
The assignment operates under a fixed one-hour timeline from 12:00 PM — 1:00 PM.
Both photographers move continuously through the market, responding instinctively to density, gesture, movement, labor, light, and human interaction.
Each photographer produces 18 photographs.
The final archive combines both sequences into a single 36-photograph collaborative document.
ENTER.
MOVE.
RESPOND.
DO NOT HESITATE.
TRUST INSTINCT OVER DELIBERATION.
12:00 PM — 1:00 PM.
THIRTY-SIX FRAMES.
GENERATE.
PRINT.
DONE.
Yesterday I met up with Sai from New York City.
Shout out to Sai.
He came down to Philly for the first time and we completed one of the FLUX assignments together: The Reading Terminal Rush.
We photographed inside Reading Terminal Market from 12 PM to 1 PM and each made 18 photographs.
Then we sequenced the work into a zine.
The project page now includes:
- all photographs
- downloadable PDFs
- contact sheets
- ZIP files
- photographer metadata
- timestamps
- sequencing info
Everything is organized chronologically.
That chronology is extremely important to me.
The sequencing reflects movement through time.
The photographs become a diary.
Sai’s Mini Zines
Sai Min Htet Oo
https://www.saiminhtetoo.com/
MINI FLUX DISPATCHES · SAI MIN HTET OO
2026 · New York
A sequence of seven MINI FLUX dispatches produced through continuous movement, repetition, and instinctive response.
Each issue functions as an isolated emotional fragment — compressed field documents generated directly from lived experience without over-analysis or revision.
DAILYLIFE · 001
WORKLIFE · 002
SILENT GOODBYE · 003
LONELY · 004
ECHO OF A SMILE · 005
SMILE AND TEETH · 006
WHEN OUR EYES MET · 007
The MINI format removes friction from publishing.
Six photographs.
One folded sheet.
One immediate response to the world.
No InDesign.
No sequencing software.
No waiting for perfection.
The objective is not polish.
The objective is momentum.
Generate the object while the emotional residue of the moment still exists.
Every dispatch becomes a timestamped psychological trace — evidence of movement through space, emotion, labor, memory, isolation, encounter, and human presence.
The archive grows through accumulation.
Issue by issue.
Walk by walk.
Moment by moment.
MOVE.
SEE.
RESPOND.
GENERATE.
PRINT.
FOLD.
DONE.
Sai also brought me around seven mini-zines he made using the Dispatch generator.
And honestly?
I think he’s using the system perfectly.
Each zine explored a different emotional or visual theme.
Some were built around:
- shadows
- gestures
- textures
- emotional pairings
- abstraction
They almost felt like little EPs.
Tiny albums.
The relationships between images were intentional in subtle ways.
One of my favorites was called Smile and Teeth.
The textures.
The grit.
The emotional intensity.
Really powerful stuff.
Another one used shadow play across two frames in a way that made the images almost merge together psychologically.
Those kinds of visual relationships are exactly what make sequencing exciting.
Shout Out to Dimitri
Dimitri Wessendorf printed his first volume of FLUX using Blurb.
Super cool to see.
He even integrated Greek text into the project, which I thought was really beautiful.
I’m just happy seeing people experimenting with sequencing and making books.
That’s the goal.
Lars Grawlow — North Germany Work
One of the strongest submissions this week came from Lars Grawlow from Germany.
The work was deeply personal.
Quiet.
Ethereal.
Subtle.
These photographs felt like memory fragments.
Black and white abstraction transformed ordinary moments into something emotional and surreal.
And honestly, these kinds of visual diary photographs are becoming some of my favorite images to look at these days.
Not spectacle.
Not perfection.
Just emotionally honest observations.
There was even this chaotic cow photograph that I absolutely loved.
And another frame using reflections and nature that genuinely made me stop and think.
That ambiguity matters.
Mystery matters.
A photograph doesn’t always need to explain itself.
Dawson — Surrealism & Community
Dawson submitted some really interesting work this week.
I honestly think we’ve got a surrealist in the community now.
One portrait in particular was extremely strong.
What I love is that Dawson is photographing people in his local small town and building relationships with them.
That matters.
Photography opens doors when you engage with humanity directly.
Another frame used reflections and layering with a mannequin in a way that created this strange psychological tension.
There was so much happening from foreground to background.
Really intriguing work.
Chris Walters — Mystery & Texture
Chris submitted one of my favorite frames this week.
The lighting was surreal.
The shadows crushed into mystery while the highlights guided your eye perfectly through the frame.
There’s something very cinematic happening in his work lately.
I also loved the self-portrait shadow frame with flowers.
It elevated an ordinary patch of grass into something poetic.
That’s photography.
Finding meaning in places people overlook.
One abstract image reminded me of religious iconography from Rome — almost like Veronica’s veil from Christian history.
That ambiguity triggered association.
And that’s what fascinating photographs do.
They activate the imagination.
Igor — Landscapes & Cohesion
Igor continues building a really cohesive body of work.
That’s difficult to achieve.
His landscapes have this emotional consistency to them that makes the work feel unified.
But he also balances that with energetic street moments.
There’s variety without losing identity.
And honestly, that’s something I think all photographers should think about:
Build your own world.
Photograph what genuinely excites you.
That joy translates into the work.
Dmitry — Raw & Punchy
Dmitry submitted some very aggressive, impactful photographs this week.
They punch you in the face.
There’s a rawness developing in the work that feels different from his previous submissions.
And I think it’s worth following.
Sometimes photography changes direction suddenly.
And when you feel that shift happening, pay attention to it.
Red Fox — Philadelphia & Preservation
Red Fox submitted some beautiful work from Philly.
There was one gesture-based image that immediately reminded me of Anders Petersen’s The Left Shore.
Simple gestures.
Simple light.
Huge emotional weight.
That’s enough.
I also challenged Red Fox to think about documenting Philadelphia itself.
Its architecture.
Its fleeting nature.
Its neighborhoods.
Because these buildings won’t exist forever.
Photography can become preservation.
An archive of a city.
A memory system.
I’d honestly love to see a project documenting the walk from Rittenhouse Square to Washington Square.
Photograph everything:
- buildings
- people
- details
- textures
- transitions
Treat yourself like an archivist.
The Goal of Weekly Witness
Long-term, I want these Weekly Witness videos to evolve into physical zine reviews.
One zine per week.
Printed.
Sequenced.
Held in the hand.
That’s the direction.
This week was update-heavy because so many things have been happening inside the FLUX ecosystem.
But eventually I want these videos to slow down and become more intimate.
More focused.
More reflective.
Final Thoughts
The mini-zine generator is live.
The Dispatches tab is live.
The catalog is growing.
People are printing work.
Making books.
Meeting up.
Building projects.
That’s the whole point.
Not perfection.
Participation.
And honestly, that’s what excites me the most right now.
Oh, and one final thing.
Tomorrow at 10 AM we’ll also be doing the weekly call, so if you want feedback on your work, want to talk about sequencing, zines, projects, ideas, or photography in general — pull up.
Other than that…
Thank you for watching.
Peace.