A Day In The Life - Rita Zebdi

This month we asked Rita Zebdi the founder of Series Magazine.

Morning - I’ve been sleeping poorly lately, par for the course when you’re nearly at term. I wake up early, while it’s still dark, and I take this window to lie in bed and play music to the baby. Apparently they remember what they hear in utero, which may or may not be true, but I like the idea of sharing music before we’ve met.

My month is divided between days on set and days alone with a laptop and too many tabs open. This is one of the latter, punctuated by deliberate exits into the city so I don’t fuse with my chair. We have a fully manual coffee machine at home, but this morning I don’t have the patience. I go out for one instead, before emails, before layouts, before the day properly begins.  

Mid Morning - Today I’m going to the library. I’ve started doing this in the mornings, partly for research but also to leave the house before the house becomes too small. I did it a lot while working on the first issue, and now, deep into the second, I’ve found myself doing it again. It’s also my last month before the baby arrives, so I’m conscious of these hours. I’m walking slower, staying longer, aware that this kind of self-directed time is about to become rarer.

On the way I pass a small pile of cigarette butts beneath two triangular vents in the wall, a pretty  little composition. Paris is good at these moments.

Some mornings I head to the BNF, other days the MEP, Sainte-Geneviève, or the Forney. Many of these libraries are historic spaces, and being in them changes the pace of things. The scale of the BNF still gets me, so does the ceiling. I usually arrive looking for something specific but end up discovering something adjacent that becomes useful later. Editing SERIES is often just structured wandering, and it’s productive getting lost in the shelves.

Lunch - By lunchtime I walk back, usually by way of several food stops. Living in Paris has turned grocery shopping into a series of small seductions. I never do one large shop, I just collect things as I walk home. A fennel I didn’t plan to buy. Yogurt from the laiterie. Bread, which I seem to want at all times.

Pregnancy has introduced its own pattern: citrus, constantly. The fresh-press machines in French supermarkets have become a near-daily stop. I stand there watching orange after orange get crushed while my bottle fills. It’s a small luxury that still feels novel. My fridge currently looks like a color study in shades of orange, something that could almost be a minor domestic Sophie Calle project if I documented it properly.

Afternoon - Back home, I’m looking at photographs on screen instead of on paper, a less romantic but more urgent version of the same activity. I review SERIES layouts, moving images forward and backward in the sequence, trying to make them behave and figuring out which ones need space around them. Everything is at a slightly different stage of completion. Today I’m brainstorming the fashion story we’ll shoot next month around the cult British brand Antoni & Alison. I revisit photos I took earlier this week while spending the day in London with Antoni, opening archive boxes, pulling out treasures, and hearing the stories behind them - a very special day.

At a certain point I print everything out and pin the pages onto foam boards so I can see the whole sequence at once. I move things around, take them down, put them back somewhere else. Seeing it all together changes the logic. The screen always feels like it lies a little.  

Evening - It’s 16:00. I force myself outside again. I’m meeting one of the photographers shooting for the second issue at a café nearby (Residence Kann where they make this simple yet most delicious brioche provencale with olive oil and orange blossom). We go over the story he's working on. There's something reassuring about meeting in person.

By early evening I’m back at the laptop, closing loops where I can. Then I’m off to a friend’s birthday party, another stylist, Dogi, one of the funniest people I know. After a day of thinking in grids and sequences, it’s nice to sit at a table with friends and talk about everything else over Senegalese food and cake.

Not every day looks dramatic, but most days build the work. Editing a magazine feels largely invisible until it suddenly isn’t.