Huda Azzis Is The Independent Photographer's Heroine
Freelance video editor Huda Azzis started Your Local Newsstand as a platform to spotlight emerging photographers and their projects. To do so, she creates and publishes zines and even mini documentaries on them and their work, all not for profit.
Consider Azzis a true-blue advocate. A freelance video editor by day, she’s also the founder of Your Local Newsstand (YLN), a four-year-old outfit that for all it does, remains largely under-reported on and underrated. The platform specialises foremost in producing and publishing limited-edition, photography-focused zines.
“Zines started as a counter-culture of sorts and as a freedom of expression,” says the 29-year-old. “The allure for me was that anyone can create them.” YLN – or Azzis, more specifically – also produces mini-documentaries, articles and digital exhibitions on emerging photographers and their work; all available for viewing on its website (www.yourlocalnewsstand.com). Its last digital show put on eight months ago featured more than 200 names from around the world.
Huda Azzis's work for the hito - bito issue of the Your Local Newsstand zine.
Driving Azzis is simply a fierce love for zine culture and photography. YLN is not for profit so she shoulders printing costs while photographers she works with receive a cut from the sale of zines – a much-needed outlet for fledgling talents especially at a vulnerable time like this.
“I like the idea of being able to look through the camera pinhole and see how others are living their life and understand their perspectives – socially, culturally or even politically,” she says of photography as a creative discipline.
And true to YLN’s free-for-all ethos, anyone interested to be featured or collaborate should just hit up its namesake Instagram account. Azzis promises to research and respond should a particular image catch her eye. “I’m always about the work first.”
Below we take a peep at some of the works that caught the attention of this young creative.
A version of this article first appeared in the January/February 2021 Art & Music Edition of FEMALE