From May 8-10, over 80 publishers from around the world, bring the best in photobook-making to the Lower East Side to ICP. Among these will be some of ICP's community members (listed below), who will be presenting their work at stalls and the community table. These are across ICP's staff, faculty members, and alumni. Find a full list of exhibitors here.
ICP Staff:
Studio 21 (Asher Selle): Studio 21 is a small independent press publishing iso-printed photo zines and books, based in Brooklyn, New York. As a press, we think of zines as a public art form: they should be accessible to make and accessible to collect. Our zine-making practice is totally DIY, meaning we collaborate directly with the artists to select images, then print and bind each zine by hand.
Studio 21 is releasing their tenth project at PBF: Fantasy Ride!, a small spiral-bound book about a cyclical bike path around the perimeter of Jeju, an island off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. Selle told ICP: "I started this press out of a desire to work with other photographers to bring their photos into a physical medium. The relationship to the work we make is shifted by holding that work as a tangible object."
Fantasy Ride!, a small spiral-bound book about a cyclical bike path around the perimeter of Jeju, an island off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. Image credit: Asher Selle
Matarile Ediciones (Martha Naranjo Sandoval): Matarile Ediciones is an artist-run photo book publisher that focuses on artists who are immigrants, their children, or part of a recent diaspora. Matarile Ediciones is run by Martha Naranjo Sandoval. Aline Enríquez is its head designer.
Naranjo Sandoval told ICP: "We have titles by immigrant artists, including Kat Shannon's book on queer motherhood; Lauren Oliver's self-portrait through her hair; the last copies of Sheida Soleimani's collaboration with her parents and birds; and Carlos Jaramillo's intimate book on Cuban pigeon racing."
Martha Naranjo Sandoval of Matarile Ediciones
Calipso Press (Eva Parra): Calipso Press is a risograph studio, publishing platform, and artistic collective founded by Eva Parra and Camilo Otero. Established in 2015 in Cali, Colombia and currently based based in New York, Calipso explores publishing as a site for research, collaboration, and critical imagination. Their practice centers on the book as a space for experimentation and conversation, treating printed matter not only as a format but as a methodology. From 2015 to 2022, Calipso hosted a residency program dedicated to expanded publishing and print-based inquiry, welcoming artists, writers, and researchers to develop projects that blur the boundaries between disciplines, formats, and geographies.
Lili Bradford: Lili is a contemporary surrealist depicting relationships between the Self and its container – often alluding to issues of gender, beauty, perception, and the nature of corporeality. Her recent work utilizes mirrors as practical distortion to abstract human anatomy and represent both binary and integrated relationships between body and soul. Bradford told ICP: “I’m especially excited to share limited edition prints from my current series, Protean: Unfinished Bodies & Untitled Gods."
MONSTER V by Lili Price
Pixie Trails (Hadasa Castro): Pixie Trails is a community-informed handbook exploring how emerging creatives in New York navigate resources, burnout, networking, and anxiety
ICP Alumni:
'cademy (Shao-Feng Hsu, Nick Sansone, and Fernando Zelaya): 'cademy is an independent publisher focusing on photographic based books made in small editions. Maintaining a DIY ethos, we emphasize collaboration as a practice, provide a platform for self advocacy and give a home to work that lacks one. ‘cademy is a labor of love founded by Shao-Feng Hsu, Nick Sansone, and Fernando Zelaya in 2019/2020. They will be releasing Ana Vallejo's All These Feelings, a photo book mapping the vulnerability of human attachment through data and design.
The trio, who graduated from ICP in 2020, said: “The ICP Photobook Fest feels like sort of homecoming, and we run into a lot of people that maybe we're not getting to see that often throughout the year. It always feels nice to be back in the school.”
Ana Vallejo's All These Feelings, a photo book mapping the vulnerability of human attachment through data and design. Published by 'cademy.
Samantha Jensen: Samantha Jensen is a Brooklyn-based artist from California whose practice spans photography and self-portraiture, drawing inspiration from figures such as Gina Pane, Carla Williams, and Hannah Wilke. Her work examines intimacy and fragility, the familial and the environmental, and the collision between personal and public histories, speaking to a sparing, sometimes removed view of intimacy, and the mirroring often found within relationships, either between individuals or the spaces they inhabit. Alongside her artistic practice, Jensen works as an art writer, contributing to publications including T Magazine MENA, GQ Middle East, and Impulse Magazine, where she has primarily profiled female artists across the region.
Her work Desert Notes will be on display at the Makan Press stall.
Desert Notes by Samantha Jensen. Published by Ibi Ibrahim, Makan Press.
Gateway Projects (Shari Diamond): Gateways Projects is an initiative founded and directed by artist Shari Diamond to support the creation and promotion of artist books, photobooks, and zines.
ICP Faculty:
Makan Press (Ibi Ibrahim): Makan is an independent publishing house dedicated to amplifying voices and visual narratives from the Global South and beyond. Makan is operated by Yemeni American artist Ibi Ibrahim.
Ibrahim told ICP: "Returning to PBF at ICP with Makan always carries a sense of gratitude. The institution played a major role in shaping how I think about photography, collaboration, and publishing. To come back this year with a new title by Samantha Jensen, an ICP alum whose work I deeply admire, feels especially meaningful." Ibrahim is also an ICP alum.
Untitled, from the series Banned Identity, 2021. Photography from Yemen by Makan Press.
Untitled, from the series I Wonder What It Feels Like, 2019. Photography from Yemen by Makan Press.