One Day Closer to Normal is a 44 page, A3 colour newsprint zine that examines life in lockdown March-June 2020.
Using techniques of collage, photography and reportage Meg Wellington has reflected on the how COVID-19 has affected the world around us – from closed shops to creative outlets, empty parks to pizza for tea. The zine suggests that the everyday has gotten even more strange.
Collecting diary entries from around the world, as well as documenting shop fronts and windows in her local area of York, Wellington’s project opens up a micro/macro narrative of how we’re all effected to varying degrees. Coronavirus has not, as was suggested by the UK government, been a ‘great leveller‘. Instead it brought health and social inequalities into even sharper focus. Choosing the format of a broadsheet newspaper underlines this fact and lends Wellington’s publication both the weight and ephemerality that comes with a 24/7 news cycle. The human element is brought forward through the dada technique of collage, which helps to narrativise the content by pulling out phrases on different pages such as : ‘SCENES WE COULDN’T FORGET’, ‘We hope we’ve seen the luck rising’, ‘And we’ll all save lives’. Both generic and prophetic, the isolated phrases communicate the snapshot in time we’ve lived through, as we’re still processing this specific, historic moment.
You can buy a copy of the zine from Meg’s website where a percentage of each sale will go towards CPAG- (child poverty action group) to help children in the UK the Covid-19 crisis.
