I sat down recently with Martha Naranjo Sandoval, founder of Matarile Ediciones. We discussed the immigrant-focused publishing press's origins, Sandoval's past curatorial projects and collaborators, the power of publishing an artist's first book, and the differences between working alongside publishers and artists.
Matarile Ediciones @matarileediciones
Rainer Turim: Hey, this is the second episode of Photo Things, a podcast talking with emerging contemporary New York City-based photo book publishers. Today, my guest is Martha Naranjo Sandoval of Matarile Ediciones.
Can you start off by talking about how Matarile Ediciones came to be?
Martha Naranjo Sandoval: Yeah, for sure. So I work at Dashwood Books, and by working at Dashwood Books, this is a cool place that a lot of people want to be in, and I already had the in. It was easy for me to do something where I was gonna be able to sell at Dashwood Books.
Also, being at Dashwood, I have a lot of book friends, so I knew that I already had a platform. So if I have a platform, I can use this to promote people that I believe in and projects that I believe in. In doing production for Dashboard Books— we also publish books at Dashwood— so in publishing those books, I realized that if I set aside a budget for it, I could actually afford to open a small thing. I'm an immigrant and it was just organic to do a project to promote other immigrant artists.
RT: Can you speak about that? Well, I'm interested— I guess it's a two-part question about the origins of that curatorial interest and also looking back at your earlier issues, you've first published someone that you previously collaborated a lot with. And then also published your own work and that transition to publishing other artists?
MNS: For sure. When I came here to the U.S., I came here to the I.C.P. Bard program. And the chair of that program, Nayland Blake, promoted a lot of important things. One of them was that if the art world out there is not what you want it to be, you should just do it yourself. And also, that a very important part of being an artist is the communities that you not only build but also that you nurture. Those two things I really took at heart, and they're very important in my practice.
From the beginning with Groana Melendez, we started collaborating to do some platforms in which we could showcase at the time a lot of Latin American artists because at the time there needed to be something to promote Latin American artists. We would see shows with a lot of people and there wasn't that big representation of Latin American artists.
We knew a lot of people, we knew a lot of cool artists, so we just wanted people to find out about them— “You need to learn about these people, and there's this place that you can do that.” So I started curating things with her.
That's the conversations that we did at Baxter Street, but also we did this other thing at Baxter Street. It was based on Pecha Kucha, which are really small talks with a lot of artists. It was like seven-minute talks with a lot of artists.
And they were in that one in particular, they were all Mexican artists. And it was a very diverse group even though they were Mexicans. There was like the oldest person in their 80s, and there was like a 22-year-old too. And, people were from very different kinds of art making and there was first generation, second generation immigrants— people who were Mexican, Japanese, or Mexican Americans. There were a lot of genders represented, so it was a very nice platform to provide for people to find out about all these artists
RT: How did that transition come from curating live programming and events to the book format? Was that through working here at Dashwood?
MNS: Doing live performance was a thing that we could do because we didn't have a whole thing to make a show, like the infrastructure. That was what we could do at the time and by the time I was here at Dashwood, what I could do here was books. So I just adapted to the platform that made more sense at the time.
RT: Were there any publishers or books that were the trigger or inspiration behind starting your own imprint?
MNS: Of course working here like Miwa Sasuda [of Session Press], a huge inspiration just because she was here and by being here, had that idea of doing her own thing to promote Asian artists because she realized that someone had to do it. So that definitely a huge inspiration, but also my friend Kat Shannon [of Memory Foam Projects], who had had the job that I have here before me also while being here, started her own imprint.
So it's like a way of still being part of Dashwood and it's still, you do things here, but you also have another adjacent thing that fuels you on where you can explore things in a different way because you're the person in charge.
RT: What was it like first publishing your work? Was there a different mindset you had for bringing people in for programming versus the book format?
MNS: Yes. Because when you’re thinking about programming, you're basically like, "Who's interesting that can talk about interesting things?" Whereas when you're publishing, you truly have to think of someone who has a project that can fit into a 32-page booklet, and not everyone does.
There are some people who you can't really offer that format because maybe they do large format photography and it doesn't make any sense to push it into something small. I'm an artist, so I have a community and have a lot of friends. So when I started Matarile, I already knew the first people that I wanted to work with, and that's why I worked with Groana, because I had already collaborated with her so much, and she's also my dear friend, and she didn't have any books. It just made sense to start with a very comfortable place with someone who already trusted me, and that I didn't have to figure out easy things, like I already knew her work so well. It was just a very solid place to do the very first thing, and then figure out all of the other things, you know?
And then the second one I did myself just because I was spending so much time doing this, that— when you're an artist and also do something else, it's very easy to feel like you're losing your identity as an artist. So publishing my own work was a way of spending all of this money, resources, and time— I might as well also nurture that side of me.
RT: How does it continue to inform your own photography?
MNS: Now having an output, like a way to output work definitely changes the way that I think about photography. And even doing my book made me think about my photography in a different way because I didn't edit that book— because I think now I could edit my work better— but at the time I didn't feel like it would have been very easy to edit my own work because I kind of didn't even know how to approach it. And so Justine Kurland who is basically my mentor edited that one and it made sense because the way that she sees photography is— It’s just amazing. She's a great teacher and she's so good at reading photographs and seeing— not only what you want to say, but what you don't want to say and what you're saying that you don't realize you're saying. But also she knows my work very well because she was my teacher and she's still like my mentor. She just really knew my work. So it made sense for her to edit that book.
And then in doing so, I learned so much about even my own work, because when someone else looks at it and someone else edits it, there are things that surface from your work that you would have never known if no one else had seen it, that even inform your work going forward.
RT: Could you speak about that relationship with the designer behind Matarile? Who, you know, is not just you making all the final decisions in terms of the format and final book. And how that may lead to new insights of the artists that you're working with or your own insights about bookmaking?
MNS: For sure. So my designer [Aline Enríquez] is back in Mexico. I've known her since I was probably 10 years old, something like that. I’ve known her since elementary and we've been very good friends since. And there was one thing that when I had the idea of doing Matarile, it was one thing that I wasn't that comfortable with, and that was designing the books, because I don't think that's where— I’m just not that great at it.
RT: Are you interested in design?
MNS: I mean, I have done it. So I do it and it's fine. But I just feel that when you work with a seasoned designer, they really can open up what a book can be in a way that sometimes you don't think about. And they just see the space in a different way. So I wanted to be able to do the layout and all of that, and not worry about what the book was going to look like in the end. So it made sense to have a designer involved in it. I instantly thought of her just because of my relationship with her. And then when I offered it, when I asked her about it, she wanted to do it with me, like together. So then we just started working together. Now it's like a no-brainer to have a designer be part of like your book thing because then you truly can do whatever
RT: Could you speak about your latest book with Genesis Báez? I was thinking about it recently because Genesis recently won the Capricious Book Prize and now it's interesting to think about what she'll be making and this last book, I think it's her only book if I'm not wrong. How does that make you think about— you know, you said before, Groana making that book for her was her first time in a book format— if that informs how you select artists or work with them in it is their first book?
MNS: It's nice either way. It's nice to work with artists that have done books or have not done books. But what's interesting about working with artists who have never done books is that, for example, Genesis has never thought about her work in that way. So it was a learning experience, for her and me, to translate this work. And you know, I became close friends through doing that book with her. And it's interesting now, even how she thinks about her work in this way, because when you have never made a book, all of your pictures have to basically be strong as stand-alone pictures, right? Because you put them on the wall and it's important that they by themselves have a strong...
RT: Punch.
MNS: But in a book, not all of them have to do that. There are pictures that are more to the narrative and to make a book make sense and, they don't have to be that strong. They’re just there kind of to help the book. And that's something that she learned through that. That's not something that you don't necessarily know intuitively as an artist before doing a book. And I'm happy to have done that with her. Not only because she is going to have a Capricious book, but also because that was a nice thing that I could do for her so that she could arrive at the Capricious thing, having done something, and with a lot more tools than she had before. I liked doing that for her because she's like just an amazing person and an amazing artist. And it was such a joy to collaborate with.
RT: Could you speak about the consistency that Matarile has? You said before that certain photographers are more interested in large format and may not be fitted for this kind of book because it is kind of, as a through line, it is a small format book and it's staple bound and there's certain formal components to it that reaffirmed this zine quality. Can you talk about that decision-making?
MNS: Yeah. So it doesn't mean that I'm never going to make books outside of this series, but I do want the series to always be the core of Matarile. There are a few practical reasons why it is like that. One of them is I can budget for it. I always know how much it's going to cost, or at least I can approximate how much it's going to cost. And that will allow me to actually know how many books I'm going to be able to make every year. But also there's something nice about having something that's part of a bigger thing so all of these artists are now in conversation with each other even though they're very different books, and they're even part of something together. Community is important for me and there is something nice about that.
There's also a way in which people could start collecting them, and then they have this collection of books together There's something comic book-y about it that I like about having something that's issues of something. They're all like friends together, but they're also standalone in their own way. I just like that format, but I am making books outside the format now.
There's some other books that want, need something different. Sometimes I am going to branch out of it, but I do want the series to be like the core.
RT: I know that they're also numbered each issue. Is there something more to the series than it being just in chronological order?
MNS: No, like right now it's just literally chronological. Because it's just like what I do after the other. I can tell you, for example, that I really wanted mine to be #2 and not #1, just because I'm weird about numbers. I really want it to be an even number for some superstitious reason. But apart from that, it's just how they are coming out and the numbers are to give it continuity and to be like, “This is part of something else.”
RT: When I was at your booth the other day at the East Village Zine Fair, I saw a number that I hadn't seen before. There's something about it that makes it feel a little bit more like that kind of punch we were talking about before. It feels like this was the missing puzzle piece. You know, maybe I've seen some of your books here at Dashwood or at Printed Matter, but then I never saw maybe #3, and then see #3, it's like, “Wow, there's that missing puzzle piece to this puzzle," even if I'm not thinking about it as them connecting. The indexical, series number provides it a kind of significance, which I think is really interesting.
MNS: Yeah. Right now, as I'm selling out of the other ones, one day when I'm like at #11, you know, you're going to maybe never have never seen #1. And then one day you're going to see it. I do like that continuity about it.
RT: There is a quality of comic book issue number in that it is your pressing— you're giving each a serial number, which I think is really exciting. How recent is your interest in making Risograph prints of the artists?
MNS: Oh, yeah. It's very interesting to me when it comes to photography, Just because of the way that we think about CMYK, it's kind of like an invention, you know. Before that, it was pigmented and it was whatever the pigments that we have that were the red, the blue, and the— and it didn't actually match CMYK.
So it is interesting that at some point, CMYK became, the way that we look at printed matter. But when you're doing Risos, you kind of have to throw that out the window and think of a different way to translate color. That's very interesting to me. So, I started doing the Risos first as a way of having something else on the table. I was just offering something that was not a book on the table, like, a different way.
Because people interact with prints in a very different way than they do in books. A lot of people come and it's like, "Oh I have that in my in my bedroom" or "I have that in my studio.” And there's something nice about having this artwork be part of their daily life in more of a way than books, so it started like that, but then when I discovered this like color separation, my interest grew in a different way.
So I'm doing all of these different Riso prints, and it's also a way to collaborate with my friends in the book world. You know, I can collaborate with Calipso or lucky, or all their Riso printers. And I like that. The first one that I did, I wanted to try it out. But the second one that I made, I made three at the same time and I made them partly because Printed Matter gave me a thousand dollars and it was a way for me to spread the wealth and pay a lot of other immigrant publishers to have these prints made.
RT: It's interesting hearing how you're talking about it, both as an experiment, but also a very intentional way of collaborating with your friends and peers, and also just this contemporary artist community that could benefit from funds.
How would you describe Matarile now versus when you first started? Is there an emerging definition of it?
MNS: When I started Matarile, I didn't super know what to expect. I knew that I was going to be able to sell them at Dashwood, and that was the extent of my knowledge.
RT: And now they’re— I just checked your stockists— as far as Australia and across the world.
MNS: Oh yeah, they're like everywhere— which is wild to me, like, they're like in Japan and you're like, "Wow, what do Japanese people think about Genesis Biaz?" But, it's also like from the very beginning, Craig from Printer Matter was so supportive. I didn't know him before Matarile, and he was very supportive of the project, and then we became friends through that, which is something that I really liked about bookmaking. There's like all of these friends that you make along the way like some of my very good friends now are fellow bookmakers, so I really like that. I really like that part of being part of this community collaborating with artists in a very different way. I appreciate that there's something about how when all of your friends are artists— being an artist makes you a little cutthroat because you truly think of your friends— it's a very competitive thing. You're thinking about your work and your work is very individualistic by definition. Basically, all of you are like getting shows and then if someone else gets a show you don't get a show, it's very cutthroat like everyone for themselves. And then like books are not like that. Like book world, it’s a little more like everyone by definition is making work for other people because when you make a book— even if it's like Matarile book— it's really more the artist's book than it is yours.
By definition, you're kind of working for someone else. So everyone is a little more chiller about that. There's something nice about being surrounded by different kinds of people. I do like artists, and I do like working with artists. But there is something nice about being with this other kind of art people.
RT: I guess my last question would be then that kind of relationship with the artists— I didn't ask as much— but how do you go about approaching an artist to work with? Could you speak about how maybe that has evolved over your time of making Matarile Ediciones? Is it the same as it was when it started, or are you giving more autonomy to the artist now than you were before?
MNS: Because the format is so small, I am apprehensive about editing it because I think editing is not intuitive for all artists. If their practice involves a lot of editing, then it makes more sense that they're more involved. But most artists don't really do much editing.
So it does make sense for me to help them with that part. It's still a collaboration. I'm never like, "This is the edit and it's set in stone." It's a very fluid thing where I start and then we go back and forth. And in terms of picking the artists, the first three I did at the same time, mostly because I wanted to start with three so it's more content than like, you start and there's only one, and then you feel like you just have one and you're showing the one around. It made sense to start with three at the same time. And those three artists, one being me, and then two artists who were my friends and whose work I've always liked. At the time Groana is one of my best friends. And Christina, I've always liked her work and we're very friendly, but we're more friendly now than we were before. I've always admired her and I think the admiration is mutual. This has made us closer for sure. And then thereafter it's been mixed the way that I approach artists. Some of them I have never heard of and someone tells me about them and I like the work and I reach out. It's a lot of me reaching out. I don't think anyone has— oh, well, one of them did reach out to me, but I, we already knew each other.
RT: There’s already a network established.
MNS: Yeah, I mean, I'm like an artist, so I have a lot of artist friends. I meet a lot of photographers. Now I'm working with someone who approached me and I really liked their work it's a different thing because she's older and she's from a different generation. So it's interesting to work with her. I really like her work and she's never been published. It's very nice for me to publish someone whose work has been around for a while, but has never had that.
RT: What are you thinking about how that book will operate— not just for her— but for the other artists you publish? How do you think about those books operating? You said before you weren't necessarily aware of how the prints are going to operate. Do you have now an understanding of how these books that you publish operate in people's personal lives and also the artist's career?
MNS: Yeah, I mean there's a nice thing about making artist books and that is that forever you're part of this artist's trajectory, like whatever they do you're part of it. Whatever they go about doing, you always will be part of this history, and I don't take that lightly.
Books survive all of us, and there's something nice about thinking about books surviving all of us, but sometimes it's a lot of responsibility too.
One thing that I realized after I made this format is that it's a little bit like a prayer book.
Like the way that it opens and the way that it flows. The relationship between people with books really varies. There are some people who really get into it and look at it a lot, and there are people who see it once and then put it aside. So it's kind of harder to know how individually people interact with books.
I know that I already have kind of a community around Matarile, which is nice. By being at fairs, there are repeating people that come and that are at this point collecting Matarile, which is very nice. And I feel so honored when people tell me things like that, that they're actively trying to get as many as they can.
It's always humbling when people trust me with their work. But also when people get into something that you are doing. These kinds of things, I worked for so long to get. And then, when it materializes, you never know how it's going to be received, because how could you? And then when people are as excited as you or sometimes even more, it's very humbling and very nice and I've had such a nice reception with Matarile and it's very moving.
RT: Yeah, it's very different than making photographs yourself because it has become this kind of traveling object.
MNS: At the zine fair someone asked me— because my work is there and they can see that it's my work, because I do self-portraits— they were like, "How does it feel to see people look at your work?"
And part of it is nerve-wracking because when they pick up your things, I'm like, "Oh, what are they going to say?” or whatever. But also in real life, you're seeing how people react to your work. And that's something that not a lot of artists get, and how people interact with it and, they’ll tell you what they think. So that is something that's very nice. And I've learned a lot about not only my work but also how people interact with books. It's all been a learning experience.
RT: Well, thank you so much for speaking with me about it.
MNS: Yeah, of course.
martha naranjo sandoval, matarile ediciones