Connor is an English photographer living in Oslo, and Pilgrim was not the first zine he had printed here. Its own opening page calls the contents fragments of time from the City of Joy to Triveni Sangam, and the pictures deliver exactly that range: yellow taxis against a sky blue wall, saffron robes beside a hazy river, porters, pilgrims and a street barber mid shave. What follows is the zine’s path from that Sunday email to finished copies, with each print decision explained at the point it was made.
Easter Monday, and a lamination we argued ourselves out of
Mike replied early the next morning with a price and a thought about the cover. Pilgrim wears a flood of saffron orange ink on 200gsm uncoated card, and a solid colour like that can crack where it folds round the spine. A matt laminate would guard against it. Then he weighed the other side. A film would seal away the soft, papery surface Connor had chosen, and on a card this light it could tug the cover into a curl. By the end of his own paragraph he had talked himself out of the idea, and said so, smiley face included.
Connor answered within minutes. He would keep the cover uncoated because he wanted the zine to feel “raw”, and in his words, “like my experience in India”. That settled the whole spec: uncoated outside, uncoated inside, no film anywhere. If your own cover is mostly one colour on uncoated board, ask the same question out loud before you order. Protection or touch? Both are reasonable answers. Choose the one your photographs need.
Pages 22 and 23, checked before a sheet was printed
That afternoon we answered his question. Yes, the truck scene sits on pages 22 and 23, dead centre of a 44 page zine built from 40 inside pages and a four page cover. Once Connor had that in writing, he booked the job.
The check mattered more than it might sound. In a wire stitched booklet, every spread except one is made of two separate leaves that meet at the fold, so a picture crossing the gutter is really two halves brought together by the binding. The middle spread is different. It is one continuous sheet, folded once, with both staples showing along its fold. A wide photograph placed there crosses the gutter whole. Connor saved that sheet for his strongest wide frame: men heaving sacks onto a truck painted in candy colours, hand lettering across its panels, a man in a green head wrap pressing into the foreground. Plan your own page count backwards from the image you most want to see unbroken, and it will land on the one sheet that can carry it.
A title that reflects like water
The cover carries no photograph. The Devanagari word तीर्थ is printed large in a deeper red orange across the saffron card, and above it the same word hangs upside down in a paler tone, like its reflection on a river. PILGRIM is spaced out in serif capitals beneath, then mirrored again along the top edge. Turn the zine over and the back is almost bare: CONNOR BRYAN in small capitals near the head, and nothing else. For a photographer whose work is all colour and crowd, a type only cover is a confident choice, and on uncoated card the two oranges sit flat and warm, with no glare between them and the reader.
Small frames first, then the street takes over
Inside, white 120gsm uncoated paper does most of the pacing. Many pages hold a single landscape photograph in a band across the upper half, surrounded by generous white margins, like prints pinned to a gallery wall. Two saffron robed figures sit on a river wall facing the haze. Opposite, a woman in an orange sari stares straight back at the lens while a barber shaves a customer behind her. An orange cloth snaps in the wind beneath a concrete bridge.
Then the book opens up. On certain spreads the street fills both pages to every trimmed edge: the truck at the centre, and a row of yellow Ambassador taxis parked against that sky blue wall, a woman in a green sari walking between them. Without a coating to float on, the ink sinks a little way into the paper, so these big colours stay rich but never glassy. Saffron, marigold and taxi yellow all keep the warmth of daylight. Mixing small, quiet frames with an occasional full bleed spread is a pacing trick worth borrowing for any travel zine, because the big moments only land if the pages around them hold back.
Where the India pictures travelled next
Connor’s India photographs were already finding an audience. A frame titled Streets of India was chosen among the Editors’ Picks for The Independent Photographer’s Street Photography Award in March 2025, announced the week before Connor sent us his files. Later that year, talking to Lomography Magazine, he named the India work as the first time he felt confident sharing his street photography. He often signs off his captions with “Print your work people!”, and this zine is that advice taken at face value.
If you are shaping a photo zine from your own travels, start with paper and sequence before you think about finishes. Our page on photo zines for street photographers covers sizes and stocks, this explainer on what happens at the fold of a stapled zine shows why the centre spread behaves as it does, and a pack of uncoated and silk swatches will show you how your colours sit on each. When the pages are in order, price an A5 zine on uncoated stock and send us the file with your own question about page 22.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100
