In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to Lesley A. Martin, creative director of Aperture. She has edited over one hundred books including collaborations with Zanele Muholi, La Toya Ruby Frazier, Richard Mosse, Hank Willis Thomas, Rinko Kawauchi, Antwaun Sargent, and Sara Cwynar to name just a few. She is also the publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture, Ojo de Pez, FOAM, and IMA magazine, among other publications, and in 2012, she co-founded the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. She is currently a visiting critic at the Yale University School of Art.

In this conversation, we discuss Lesley’s personal relationship to the platform of the book and the wider community. We reflect on the current state of photobook publishing and what it can offer a body of work. We talk about audience, the impact of self-publishing, how to decipher the most compelling pathway through a body of work and how to shepherd a project through a constantly shifting context. We talk about methodology, commitment as well as the rich history of the photobook. 

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