Misread in Tromsø.

{Misreadings in hand.}

misread |mɪsˈriːd|
verb ( past and past participle misread |-ˈrɛd| ) [ with obj. ]
read (a piece of text) wrongly.
• judge or interpret (a situation or a person's manner or behaviour) incorrectly: had she been completely misreading his intentions?
• interpret a collection of someoneelse's photographs to suit own end: in order to keep herself amused she misread the scenes before her before binding them into a zine to take to Sticky's annual zine fair.

Ever wondered who lives in that house nearby with the round window in the front door? Or who tends that garden with the ‘spoilt cat lives here’ plaque in the pot of mint? (And just how do they get their rosemary to grow so seemingly fluffy?) That man, over there, leaning forward: what is he looking at? (And who put that dog on the table?) That woman sitting opposite on the city-bound 96: is she going to the dentist? Or perhaps on her way to bluff through a PowerPoint presentation in an office with tinted windows? To fall asleep in a meeting with her eyelids open?

To make up stories and mull over possibilities likely and unlikely is a pastime of mine and it is not especially unique. We all read people and situations around us; we speculate, ponder, observe. We give new meanings to a series of images we find on the internet whilst searching for cabinet cards featuring ‘hidden mothers’ obscured from camera’s eye by lace cloth or chair back. In the photo archives of the Perspektivet Museum in Tromsø, Norway, I found a treasure trove of photographs from their extensive local collections from the (former) Tromsø Town Museum and (former) Troms Folk Museum. Presented with such a collection, of a different world in a different time, my pastime ponderings gloriously liberated. And so sprung Misreadings, a new zine for you and destined for this Sunday’s zine fair at the Melbourne Town Hall.

Images dovetailed into ideas, and words were written based on each image and the order it was collected in. Photographs plucked from a stream fitted each corresponding notch, and this is the result:




















{In the early morning, in the haze of a hot day obscured by cloud, Misreadings is documented. In the background, runners run and people dart to work or to the shops or to we know not where.}

All images in Misreadings borrowed and misread with permission from the former Tromsø Town Museum and Troms Folk Museum collections now in the photo archives of Perspektivet Museum (PEM), Tromsø, Norway.

+ Misreadings is now available for $8.00(AUD) through our online store