Friday, September 12, 2025
Book Launch: What Makes a Photobook Sustainable?
Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network
Friday, September 12th, 10:30–11:15AM
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
10 Lessons for a Dead President
Marina Berio
Friday, September 12th, 11:30AM–12:15PM
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
Publishing as Listening:
Collaborative and Decentralized Approaches to the Photobook
New Poetics of Labor
Friday, September 12th, 1–1:45PM
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
Group Publication:
New Directions of Contemporary Photographic Practice — Curation and Approach
Pellicola
Friday, September 12th, 2:30–3:15PM
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
For more information, email: lisa@penumbrafoundation.org