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Why I Published an Unfinished Zine

Why I Published an Unfinished Zine

Stay Unfinished. That's the idea behind my monthly zine project

Yusuke Nagata
June 30, 2026

“Stay Unfinished.”

That's the idea behind my monthly zine project.

Photos in a photobook usually carry a clear intention. By the time they're published, they've already been carefully selected and assigned meaning by the photographer.

A zine is different.

To me, a zine is more like a mixtape. It's allowed to be unfinished. It's a place for photographs that haven't yet settled into their final meaning—even for me.

By sharing those unfinished photographs with other people, and sometimes talking about them together, I believe their meaning can continue to grow.

That's what this monthly project is all about.

And this month, I made another unfinished zine. This time, it's a negative zine: DARKROOM IN USE VOL.O5.

Only Available until July 5th

Negatives Are Full of Possibility.

In film photography, a negative isn't the finished image. It's possibility.

A single negative can become countless different photographs depending on how it's printed. And after developing a roll of film, the very first thing you see isn't the final photograph—it's the negative itself.

If you've ever shot film, you've probably held a strip of negatives up to the light just to see what was captured.

That simple moment became the starting point for this zine.
I wanted to recreate that experience for you.

This zine contains 24 negatives (48 pages), all printed on translucent tracing paper.
The translucent pages make it feel surprisingly close to holding real film negatives in your hands.

You Complete It.

Whenever I develop film, I often use my iPhone's color inversion feature to quickly preview the negatives as positive images. If scanning your film or making contact sheets feels like too much work, give this a try.

On iPhone, go to:
Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut → Classic Invert

Once it's enabled, you can simply triple-click the Side Button (or Home Button) to toggle color inversion on and off.

I hope you'll experience this zine the same way.

Enjoy it as a collection of negatives—but also try viewing it through your phone with color inversion turned on and discover the positive images hidden inside.

This Month's Darkroom Print

As always, every monthly zine includes one of my original hand-printed darkroom prints.
This month's print is "Woman in Fishnets," printed on fiber paper.

It's a print that really lets the grain of the film shine through, and I'm excited for you to experience it in person.

Every purchase helps me keep shooting film and making projects like this.

It also directly supports FAR EAST DARKROOM (FED), the independent platform I run. One thing that's important to me is how FED works with photographers.

Instead of taking zines on commission like most bookstores, I usually purchase them outright.
That means photographers don't have to worry about unsold inventory, and they receive payment upfront—money they can immediately put toward making their next zine.