Luis Weinstein

Thursday, September 11th, 11:30AM–12:15PM

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Luis Weinstein is a photographer, editor, lecturer and curator from Santiago de Chile. He has been a member of the board of the International Festival of Photography at Valparaíso until 2015. He is the author of more than ten photobooks and has founded the South American photo magazine Sueño de la Razón. Through Fundación SudFotografica, a nonprofit he currently chairs, he collaborates in the research of the Chilean photobook.

Akiko Wakabayashi with Letra Muerta

Thursday, September 11th, 1–1:45PM

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Design is crucial to our experience of photobooks. From the materiality of the printed page to the structuring of images and integration of text, each designer brings their own sensibility to the process. Amsterdam-based book designer Akiko Wakabayashi and Brooklyn-based Letra Muerta present their projects and approaches to the photobook, as well as their collaboration with artists to provide context for their photographs.

Akiko Wakabayashi is from Nagano, Japan, works and lives in Tilburg, the Netherlands. She moved to Amsterdam (via London) to study graphic design, then worked at a design office before starting own practice. Akiko works project-based with individuals, couples, teams, groups of people, organizations etc., mainly in the field of book design.
akikowaka.com

Letra Muerta Inc. is an award-winning design studio, workshop, and Latin American Archive center co-directed by Faride Mereb and Oriana Nuzzi, located in New York City. Originally founded as a publishing house by designer and editor Mereb in Venezuela in 2014, Letra Muerta Inc. has now grown into a hybrid studio dedicated to design experimentation, historical preservation, and collection development while paying special attention to typography and cultural awareness. While the studio welcomes participation from all, it primarily supports the work of Latin American and Caribbean artists, particularly women and other people of the periphery.
faridemereb.com
orianamargarita.art
letramuerta.nyc

Lukas Birk

Thursday, September 11th, 2:30–3:15PM

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This talk examines how photobooks can serve as living archives that circulate within communities and reshape the way histories are remembered, utilized, or revisited. Focusing on overlooked photographic practices such as itinerant box camera photography in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and Turkey, and on locally produced publications like the Myanmar Photo Archive, Birk shows how publishing can transform forgotten records into active cultural tools that  become a form of community building, inspiring new generations to continue and transform this history through practice as well as scholarship.

Lukas Birk is a photo artist, researcher and publisher. Lukas researches his imagery through investigations and explorations very often in areas that have been affected by conflict and have not yet had the chance to present existing material in an artistic form such as Afghanistan or Myanmar. He co-founded artist platforms and residency programs in China and Indonesia, an archive platform in Afghanistan and initiated the Myanmar Photo Archive. Since 2011 he publishes books on photographic history under the imprint Fraglich Publishing. Lukas gives workshops in printmaking, photobook making and consults on visual narrative construction. He is a Fulbright Fellow and  studied photography at the University of West London and printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. 
lukasbirk.com
afghanboxcamera.com
instantboxcamera.com

Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network

Friday, September 12th, 10:30–11:15AM

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This talk celebrates the launch of the U.S. edition of What Makes a Photobook Sustainable? (Penumbra: 2025), a compendium of forty case studies along with roundtable discussions, essays, quotes and prompts. In the spirit of the publication - which seeks to spark questions, new ideas, connections and conversations - the talk will introduce the book and use it as a prompt for discussion between contributors. 

The Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network(est. 2021) is a platform for the exchange of ideas and knowledge around how as individuals and collectively we can move towards a more ecological photobook publishing practice. We develop open source research and practical resources as well as organising talks, workshops and exhibitions.
manualeditions.com

Marina Berio

Friday, September 12th, 11:45AM–12:30PM

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Marina Berio discusses the development and content of her self-published artist book about the incarceration of her family along with over 120,000 other Americans of Japanese descent during World War 2. The unique design encompasses a letter addressed to Franklin D Roosevelt at his final resting place, fifteen photographs, and a blue risograph poster, all folded into a barrack-shaped envelope. Berio researched the piece at the National Archives in Washington DC, in family and institutional photo collections, and in the concentration camp at Heart Mountain where her mother was born. Her grandfather’s detainment by police, secret smuggled lenses and hidden darkrooms, and baby pictures are some of the topics touched on in the letter to FDR, along with the relevance of this history to current events.

Berio studied photography, drawing, sculpture and art history in college, and then earned her MFA in Photography at Bard. She has been awarded grants by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts grants, and visited various residencies including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Millay. Her work was recently included in a large historical survey of materiality in Photography at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; other solo shows have been at Galerie Miranda in Paris, France; Galería Phuyu in Buenos Aires; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, and the OFF Triennale in Hamburg. Berio teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and has been invited to critique student work and speak as a visiting artist at many other graduate and undergraduate programs across the country. She is a founding member of PAIN, the activist group founded by Nan Goldin to hold the Sackler family accountable for their role in creating the opioid crisis.
marinaberio.net

New Poetics of Labor

Friday, September 12th, 1–1:45PM

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This talk will share New Poetics of Labor’s methodology as both artists and publishers, with the understanding that their practice is an evolving dialogue between artistic research and the collaborative act of making books with others. Each publication is developed closely with artists, writers, and makers, with all design and editing done in-house, and production carried out locally. Their approach is rooted in a decentralized perspective, creating space for underrepresented voices and aesthetics to shape the conversation, not tied to a single authority but dispersed among many: artists, readers, communities, languages, and places.

New Poetics Publishing is an independent publishing house based between Bogotá, New York, and Austin, founded and run by artists Nechama Winston and Cristina Velásquez. NPP is part of New Poetics of Labor, a research platform founded in 2017. NPP was a finalist for the 2024 Lucie Foundation’s Photobook Prize. The books are in the collections at CCS Bard Library, MoMA Library (forthcoming), The Center for Book Arts, Pratt Institute, and the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, and are available at Printed Matter and Miriam Gallery, NYC; Ulises Books, PA; One Third Space, LA; Nada and Garabato in Bogotá, and La Bruja Riso, Medellín. The books were also previously on view with Printed Matter, St. Marks in their window display, Sep-Oct 2024.
newpoeticsoflabor.com

Pellicola

Friday, September 12th, 2:30–3:15PM

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For the launch of Pellicola’s first print issue, the magazine explores Time in response to the need to take a step back from the speed of the digital environment in which the project was born and developed. Through the slowness and materiality of paper, it aims to enhance those images that are often devalued or overlooked by visual overproduction. The theme unfolds across 188 pages of content ranging from photo series, articles and interviews. Structured as a journey, also a sensory one, the editorial project offers an in-depth exploration of contemporary photography. Different perspectives flow throughout the magazine: beginning with the editorial team’s point of view in the Projects section, moving to the photographers’ own voices in In Dialogue, and culminating in the insights of field experts in the closing Perspectives section.

Since its founding in 2015, Pellicola has been a self-funded initiative, carried forward entirely on a voluntary basis by the core team, driven by passion and supported by a group of close collaborators contributing to content creation. In May 2023, a nonprofit organization was established to formalize the collective mission of the project, registering with RUNTS (Registro Unico Nazionale del Terzo Settore) as an ETS. Pellicola has collaborated with various organizations, such as M9 - Museo del '900 (press office, 2018), Wetransfer (promotion of the Union of Concerned Photographers project, 2018), Casa dei Tre Oci (press office, 2019), Paris Photo (promotion of annual editions, 2021-ongoing), Mucho Mas! (Open call for visual artists with final collaborative exhibition, 2023-24), Twenty-14 (presentation of the print issue with collaborative exhibition, 2024).
pellicolamag.com

Lindsay Buchman

Saturday, September 13th, 10:30–11:15AM

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Join Lindsay Buchman of Seaton Street Press for a presentation on Risography featuring her publications and approach to translating photographic images through Risograph printing, including a hands-on demonstration. Buchman will discuss aspects of image-making from film grain to paper stock, ink choices, and learning to decode postproduction for print. With a background as a screen printer and a practice as a lens-based artist, she will share insights on book production for Riso, coinciding with a demonstration of printing approaches for tonal range. Attendees will see visual examples in slide presentation format along with physical books, book dummies, and prints from Penumbra’s ME9450 Risograph duplicator.

Lindsay Buchman is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and publisher based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores image-making and writing through print and lens-based media, artist books, and installation. Recent exhibitions include the Penumbra Foundation (NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (NY), and the San Francisco Center for the Book (CA). Her work is included in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and SFMOMA. She is a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and the Flaherty Fellowship, and her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Lenscratch, and The Hopper Prize Journal. Buchman has been an artist-in-residence at Light Work, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lower East Side Printshop, and Kala Art Institute. She holds an academic appointment as Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College. As an extension of her practice, she publishes under the imprint Seaton Street Press. Buchman holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from California State University, Long Beach.
lindsaybuchman.com

Sandra Erbacher, Claire Warden, Daniela Spector

Saturday, September 13th, 12–1PM

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Celebrate the launch of artist publications by Penumbra Foundation Risograph Residents, with special presentations by each resident. Limited quantities of their editions will be available for purchase.

Crowd Psychology, Sandra Erbacher
”Crowd Psychology is an artist book that examines the volatile and mesmerizing nature of collective behavior. Engaging with Gustave Le Bon’s 1895 text The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, this project interrogates the mechanisms that shape mass psychology—impulsiveness, contagion, suggestion, and the dissolution of individual identity within the collective. Through a carefully curated juxtaposition of images, Crowd Psychology weaves together visual fragments from biology, science, history, warfare, art and design, the animal kingdom, medicine, ethnography, anthropology, and finance.“
sandraerbacher.com

Mimesis, Claire Warden
“The creation of my work comes at a time when the struggle to accept the unfamiliar is pervasive in our culture. When looking at much of my work, the urge to ask “what is it?” echoes the question, “what are you?” – a question directed to me countless times as a person of color with a diverse ethnocultural heritage and one I increasingly tend to resist. That resistance carries through the work as resistance to definition as well as the hegemonic gaze and, instead, emphasizes opacity and illegibility.”
claireawarden.com

Security Matter (C) - A Portrait of Surveillance, Daniela Spector
”Security Matter (C) - A Portrait of Surveillance draws directly from the nearly 400 pages of Spector’s grandmother’s FBI file. The book aims to illuminate and critique the government’s surveillance of people, its own citizens, advocating for equality and peace by appropriating pages directly from the file and recontextualizing them through the lens of family history. Designed to evoke a government file, each spread is split in half–the left-hand pages feature the FBI’s portrait of Spector’s grandmother, and the right-hand pages feature images of her grandmother from their family archive.
danielaspector.com

Lina İrem Arditty with Evan Davis

Saturday, September 13th, 1:30–2PM

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Lina İrem Arditty, a 2024 alumna of the Long Term Program: The Photobook, presents her risograph photobook, Long Couch in the Living Room, published by Penumbra on the occasion of the LTP’s fifth anniversary. Arditty’s photographic project, a gritty and unflinching anatomization of existence with a painful, chronic illness, was developed into a photobook during her year as an LTP student. She is joined by the program’s coordinator, Evan Davis, who will discuss the LTP’s mission and history. Limited quantities of Long Couch in the Living Room will be available for purchase.
Instagram: Lina İrem Arditty
photobooksatpenumbrafoundation.org

Travis Shaffer

Saturday, September 13th, 2:30–3:15PM

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In this talk, Shaffer considers how fidelity, authorship, and collaboration shape the published photograph. Drawing on his practice as a publisher (theretherenow) and print researcher (color/shift), Shaffer will share how he engages experimental publishing and risograph printing as a means of reframing the bounds of photo reproduction in print. The discussion follows the never-ending dance between the desires of the artist, the agency of the printer, and the limitations of the press.

Travis Shaffer is a member of ABC [Artists’ Books Cooperative], an international group of book artists, and runs a risograph publishing imprint called theretherenow. Shaffer’s artist’s books are housed in public and private collections including MoMA’s and SFMoMA’s Artist’s Books Collections (New York + San Francisco); the Tate Library and Archives (London); Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book + Manuscript Library (New Haven); FRAC Pouitou-Charentes (Angoulême) and have been exhibited in galleries and museums including C/O Berlin and the Museum Brandhorst (Germany); Gagosian Galleries (New York, Paris, and Beverly Hills), Arts Santa Monica (Barcelona), FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen. Shaffer’s works have also been included in major photography and book art festivals and fairs  including  Les Rencontres d'Arles (Arles, FRA), Brighton Photo Biennial (Brighton, UK), Printed Matter’s NY and LA Art Book Fairs; Offprint Paris, Offprint London.
travisshaffer.com

Ruth Lauer-Manenti & Mateo Ruiz González

Saturday, September 13th, 4:00–4:45PM

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Ruth Lauer-Manenti and Mateo Ruiz González explore bookmaking as a form of self-care that encourages self-expression and reflection. Both artists work with large-format photography, a process that requires time, patience, and trust in the revelations that can only come through a slow unfolding. Their conversation will not follow a fixed structure, but instead serve as a dynamic exchange of ideas, highlighting how they each approach bookmaking and the ways in which it shapes their creative processes. During the discussion, they will share their dummies and books, using them as examples to reflect on how their work evolves over time. They will explore the concept of "divine timing" in their practice—how ideas shift and transform when brought into the form of a book.

Ruth Lauer Manenti received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in painting and drawing in 1994. In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it. Gradually she accomplished what she was striving for in drawing and painting through photography. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Part of Ruth’s determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and to create a continuum. Ruth is currently working towards an MFA in photography at Hartford University where she received a merit scholarship towards her studies. Her father found beauty in a hole in his shirt; in the way that it spoke of impermanence and fragility. Her mother was grateful that there was a tree she could admire from the kitchen window while washing dishes. Her parents endured a lot of suffering yet lived with poetic sensibilities that Ruth has inherited from them. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, Ruth has developed a spiritual life and practice that has propelled much of her photographic work. She lives in the Catskill Mountains in NY with her husband, a nurse and tai chi practitioner and their 2 cats.
ruthlauermanenti.com

Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez is an emerging photographer born in Bogota, Colombia, educated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and living in Brooklyn, New York, who aptly navigates the disciplines of storytelling, editorial photography, and fine-art photography. His work reflects the realist way he observes his environment, blending quietly with his surroundings and taking advantage of natural light to capture real colors. He enforces design rules and structure in his framing, while keeping a candid and organic feel—seeking a constant harmony in his work. Using poetic mediums, Ruiz Gonzalez explores the beauty of unassuming moments, often capturing harsh scenes with a delicate eye, and bringing new value to often-overlooked settings.  He is the co-founder of Antics Publications—an independent photography publisher based in Brooklyn and Bogotá, Colombia.
mathewfg.com