The sixth edition was a real jump in quality for me. After five years of making these publications, I finally felt that the zine was becoming something much bigger than a yearly collection of photographs. Its premiere was accompanied by my biggest exhibition to date, PRINTED DREAMS — a project that became a kind of proof of quality to myself. It showed me how far I had come and, more importantly, that I was capable of raising the bar again.

I have always treated April, my birthday month, as my own personal New Year. Instead of looking back at the end of December, I use each birthday to ask myself what kind of person I had been during the previous year, what I had created, what I had experienced and what had happened to me along the way — both good and bad.

For the past six years, I have been documenting these reflections visually and through text in my zines. Every year, I create a visual diary from scratch, publish it independently and quite literally put another year of my life onto paper.

My 22nd birthday was about raising the bar and honouring everything I had created up to that point. It was one of the most intense years of my life, both professionally and personally, but in the best possible way. So much was happening that I actually forgot to properly write about the zine when it premiered in April.

This edition was different not only because of what was inside, but because of how much care went into making the object itself. I increased the print run from 100 to 300 copies, improved the print quality, introduced a glued binding with a hard spine instead of staples, and paid much more attention to colour reproduction. The edition eventually sold out.

These details might seem insignificant to someone looking through the pages, but they matter enormously to me. I love the parts of my work that are almost invisible — the quality of the paper, the colour, the way a page opens, the way an image feels when it is finally printed. Sometimes the most important work is the work the viewer barely notices.

The premiere of the zine alongside PRINTED DREAMS felt like a full circle moment. At 22, I was able to look at everything I had created so far, put it on the walls, put it between the pages and say to myself: this is the level I want to work at now.

ZINE 6 was not just another edition. It was a statement to myself that everything before it had led somewhere.