Faith Aylward is a 21 year-old, English-Nigerian photographer and stylist who is using her photography abilities to build up a visual dialect to express her feelings and thoughts, with an intent to stir up change in the world.
Faith has finally released her first print zine THISGUISE, a 150 page visual and written compilation of stories, experiences and exploration . In our little conversation she shares about what inspired the name, what inspired her zine and how she wants people to feel about her new work.
Tell me a little bit about the title of the zine , Thisguise ? I love the word play
My dad actually really came up with it, were kind of brainstorming on ideas cause we were just playing around with things surrounding stuff like perception, depths, exploration, reflection, which is the essence of all the topics the zine kind of focuses on, so we played around with different ones like….I think framework, my identity, but then as soon as he said Thisguise I don’t know it really just struck a chord with me like yes that is the one.
Could you tell me a bit more about the zine?
So in terms of content I kind of wanted to make something that wasn’t like typically mainstream in terms of content , just sort of the things I am into ,so in the foreword I described it as a visual and written compilation of stories , so I could tell the stories through images as well as through the written articles but it basically explores human nature, what does it mean to be human, the experiences we have and we don’t really like to talk about because they are culturally sanctions topics but like of we all experience. So things like sexuality, mental health, and drugs …it talks about just like global consciousness, social commentary, and self-awareness. Topics like that are what it mainly explores in terms of images, I try to keep it obviously creative but there is a kind of like a psychedelic theme running through it.
What inspired this zine?
Yeah its quite 60s inspired, I was really inspired by the 60s psychedelic movement and all that so that is kind of like a running theme I produced in the zine.
How do you hope that this zine would influence its reader and what’s the lesson they are supposed to take from it?
When I make stuff I kind of just want people to take their own interpretations to form it but in general I feel like my purpose of doing it is just to make people think…that’s just basically the main purpose, it’s to make people think that this are not topics and would concern people on like an everyday basis , so even though you don’t necessarily agree with content and it doesn’t strike you I just want to have made you consider it from a different perspective so that’s really my main aim with the zine, even in terms of the pictures not only just the writing. It just makes you think of what it means to you, how you feel when you see it.
Words: Chukwuka Iwobi
Images: Faith Aylward
