No. 14 – HAMBURGER EYES

I’m going to start highlighting past issues and publications as a feature here on the site. We have an awesome archive. Well what is left of it anyways, we did crash a big hard drive and blown up at least 2 computers. And for some reason I feel like telling a story right now.

Photo by John Oliver Hodges

Hamburger Eyes No. 14, I consider this one the missing issue. If you have this one you are stoked. With No. 13 we were feeling ourselves, our hardcover book just came out, and we had just secured a new headquarters that we named “The Photo Epicenter”. We were using a offset print shop in the SOMA of SF and we ordered 3000 copies. It was around 150 pages or so. This issue cost around $9000 to make and that is a really good deal. We would get distributors to pre-pay, we had advertising in the back of the magazine, worked out a deal with the print shop to make payments, and we had ways of raising funds quick.

Photo by KC Ortiz

Then the economy crashed. You never think these things will affect you until they do. Money became very tight. We had lots of new bills, advertisers weren’t buying ads, shops were closing, and the distributor was cutting their order in half or more and didn’t want to pay up front.

Photo by Alex Martinez

So we focused on the lab. We had darkroom and studio rentals and a gallery. And I got a laser printer and a xerox machine. From these machines we started cranking out zines. Tons of zines like 4 or more titles a month. I bought paper cutters and glue binding machines. I figured we will just go back to making zines and Hamburger Eyes will now just be a zine publisher. We did that for 2 or 3 years straight.

Photo by Dennis McGrath

Then I started a new zine series called “Mankind”. We made 3 issues. Perfect binding, laser print, over 100 pages. People were saying why don’t you just call it Hamburger Eyes. So, we made Hamburger Eyes No. 14. The feedback wasn’t good. People were spoiled by earlier issues of nice high quality printing. They didn’t mind all the zines we were making, but they wanted their “Hamburger Eyes” to be better. I get it, I do too.

Photo by Jai Tanju

We continued making more xerox zines and by the time it was ready to make a new issue of Hamburger Eyes, I found a good price for some online digital printing. Hamburger Eyes No. 15 was digitally printed by a company on the east coast. 88 pages stapled, 500 copies. The size has changed a little and the binding, but this is how we print our magazine now.

Photo by Elmo Tide

Anyways, I only ended up making maybe 75 copies or less of No. 14 and I don’t even have a copy. These photos throughout this post are a few highlights and I think this is a really good one that didn’t get much love because of the print quality. So today we will give it some love.