Bio Auto Graphic - scar issue (issue one )

Bio Auto Graphic - scar issue (issue one ) 
Michael C Nicholson / ensixteen editions, 2005. 

A5, 12 pages, including flesh coloured cardboard cover.

£4


First impressions count, but they are as much about what the viewer brings to the encounter as the viewed, we also bring the almost invisible - scars: 

"out of context they're abstract...morbidly compelling notes of experience on our very skin".

I have a few scars - some from unexceptional knocks and cuts, others from one-sided fights with fists and pavements. One runs almost vertically from just under my nose to the the top of my lip. It is an almost invisible small white line, but the scar refuses to grow hair. That permanent absence means I have never grown facial hair, as that ordinarily invisible line leaves a hugely visible gouge in any attempted moustache.

Bio Auto Graphic traces a similar path through permanent scars of experience of friends, acquaintances and ex-lovers. A history of marks left on the zine's author, a set of mini-narratives that are unafraid to lay bare moments that are by turns moving and funny. This is a celebration of the marks that make us human.  

Although this issue was made in 2005, copies are still available via the Ensixteen blog - check out the more current issues while you are there. ensixteeneditions.blogspot.com

Or email Michael directly to order: ladnicholson(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk

Previous issues of Bio Auto Graphic are reviewed here. 

Review by Nathan Penlington