Transcript for Episode 149 – Photographer, Publisher + Owner of Zatara Press, Andrew Fedynak (Virginia, USA)

Recorded February 5, 2021
Published on February 23, 2021

Recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/photographer-publisher-owner-of-zatara-press-andrew-fedynak/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
Could you please pronounce your name correctly? For me?

Andrew Fedynak 0:14
That’s a very good question. My name is Andrew Fedynak. That’s the anglicization of it. So yeah.

Matthew Dols 0:20
anglicization where’s it from?

Andrew Fedynak 0:22
It’s originally a Western Ukrainian name, and it’s transliterated and then anglicised, both after changing the alphabet and then changing the pronunciation to what it is now fat neck here.

Matthew Dols 0:34
Alright, so you don’t want to be referred to as a publisher. So give me a little sort of, no, no, I refer to as a publisher. Yeah. Okay. All right, not as a founder. That’s the one you didn’t want. Okay? Yeah, I’m a publisher, for sure. Every day of the week, unfortunately, sometimes. Give me a little sort of a general day to day of what you do, because you’re both a practicing photographer, as well as you’re a publisher, you’re also a book designer. Give me some more information. What else do you do?

Andrew Fedynak 1:05
And that’s pretty much the week at that point, when you’re talking about publishing and designing books and working on the books you’re designing for our company, sometimes for other people doing edits for them. And then my own personal work, which unfortunately, gets sidetracked to the side. But that’s the same as any professor teaches five days a week, and then, you know, 4433 load and then they’re, they’re lucky, they get studio practice for themselves three days, or two days a week. So it’s similar to that kind of layout, but no, very much. So publisher, you know, publisher, owner of guitar press,

Matthew Dols 1:42
where did the name come from Zatara.

Andrew Fedynak 1:44
The origin of the company is out of Hartford art school, where I went as a Masters to get my masters into my MFA at University of Hartford, Hartford art schools limited residency, photo bookmaking program. And in it, we were making these books that we had to graduate books to graduate. And out of that, you know, the first two books of guitar press are the first two books from that program, which I’ve completed two books in the program. Some people complete one book, I completed a book The first year, and they still make books, you make another book. And so I needed a name for that. And I decided to I’d already had ideas to make this company back in 2013. And then by 2014, is when we’re actually publishing those books. And so the Torah is about driftwood and ugly because of referring to this Wabi Sabi design aesthetic that I work in. And I’ve been working with this design aesthetic. And this this way of being this ethos, this Zen ethos of Wabi Sabi. Since about 2006. I’ve been practicing in zen, since I’ve tried to remember exactly, it’s not an exact start, but like 2001, period, different periods of aggressiveness, and, of course, probably a little more least aggressive at the beginning of graduate school. And I was very normal because of where I was living. So this idea of creating this Wabi Sabi books, these books that are perfect and imperfect, but also beautiful, the warm the imperfection, and that being this idea of unique art object books, with this design aesthetic. Was this idea to launch this company.

Matthew Dols 3:30
What is the word satara mean? And what does it mean to the title of the publishing company? It means

Andrew Fedynak 3:37
driftwood, or raft are ugly, in that sense. And that’s the definitions we use for it. There’s some debate about whether it means that depending on who you talk to, but that’s the story, and we’re sticking to it.

Matthew Dols 3:50
One of the things that I like to know about people is sort of their childhood. So were your parents creative? How did you get to being creative in and of itself?

Andrew Fedynak 3:59
Well, we didn’t throw the word creative around in that period. That’s more of an contemporary word post 2009 being thrown around really heavily in marketing and social spheres. But my parents come from you know, they’re working people who work their middle class jobs. And my mother had a lot of creative aspects to her when she worked in the theater. And I grew up in the theater with my mother who was doing theater and both in a community level and sometimes semi professional, also was always had some sort of new craft project or some sort of new hobby they were doing on about every three year period, I feel like it’s switch. But my father who would go around never saying he’s creative is actually extremely hands on and creative and building and working on pieces of wood or fixing something in the house. And so those both work ethic and the spark of finding something creative. You’ve come does come from them very much. So, you know, though they don’t think of themselves in that sense because they value creativity as being sometimes equated monetarily, which it shouldn’t be, but so they don’t necessarily define themselves that way. But I’ve looked back in the past and gone.

Matthew Dols 5:16
No, they were very creative. And it was a generational thing where like, there was a time when, when, you know, the definition of like, being an artist or being a creative person was sort of looked down upon in the American society, and it’s becoming much more acceptable these days. Because also, I think the the nature of like, the commercial arts as well as the fine arts can easily be blended a lot of people who do fine arts do commercial arts to just get by basically to fund their their fine art projects, possibly sort of like you like you’re doing book designs in order to fund your own creative projects.

Andrew Fedynak 5:52
No, I mean, yeah, that’s there’s no money in photo bookmaking, you know that. So I assume that’s been talked about on the podcast a couple dozen times. So it just isn’t, you know, you make our for the sake of making our you make art for the love of making the art and doing the art. And if you’re here to want to be famous, which is what a lot of people want to do these days, which is a big problem, which is part of why don’t teach anymore. That’s not why people do it. You know, they want to make money. That’s the other thing. And they get frustrated, because they can well, you know, that’s not how it works. So, oh, yeah. When

Matthew Dols 6:28
I was a kid, I remember thinking, like, having a book was like my big artistic life goal. And then as I’ve gotten older, I realized that well, through conversations with people such as yourself that like, you know, photo, like crude boosting a monograph, generally, I mean, unless you’re Sally man, or anybody like that, generally is not a money making venture, it’s but it’s a, it’s a, sort of a nice sort of recognition in the industry, when you can have a book published, like there’s a certain amount of that, that’s nice, looks great on the CV, sort of, you know, UPS your credibility in the industry, when you have a book out there.

Andrew Fedynak 7:08
Yeah, for certain in, especially in the academic world, which is one of the many branches of tree, the tree branches of photography, which is a whole analogy I could go off on but people think of it that way, some do it for it to be a stepping stone for it to be a thing that they have to have. And you know, once you make a book, because they feel the work needs to make a book or the work dictates a book, not necessarily because they want it to be a book or a monograph, or an artist’s book, which are all different types of photo books. And

Matthew Dols 7:41
I want to hear about your tree of branches of photography.

Andrew Fedynak 7:44
Yeah, a lot of the analogies I speak too much in aphorisms, analogies, and slang, which I get in trouble with is me trying to figure out how to explain to the student side hat assistant side hat, or to my family, or my, my mother and my father, how this whole photo thing actually works, how this whole art thing actually works. And I’m going to tell you, I’ve been trying to explain it to them forever. I think my dad gets it, I’m not so sure about some of the other family members. I really do think he gets it. But the idea is, it’s this tree. And there’s all these categories of photography. And you could have divided the tree to hobbyist and professional but then you divide it into branches of, you know, fashion journalism, editorial journalism, I guess, like, you know, fine art, academia and certain ones overlap the branches, some interact. And then they tend to like not want to talk to each other, like a hard working professional, high end fashion photographer will be just as trained and as hard working as a high end, academic Fine Art documentary bookmaking photographer, but they’ll look down on each other. There’s no reason they should, but they do a lot of times. And that’s some of the disconnect in our industry. And I’ve always thought there should be more of a unification, a love of photography of the whole, and some people have advocated for this in the past, I’m not saying anything new. But it’s never been achieved. It’s always still very defined by what you track you get into and maybe you’re allowed to venture out of your track a little bit. If you’re good enough. You can play in movies edit or film or short film. If you’re good enough, you can play in editorial and fine art documentary while you’re now becoming a professor because there’s no newspapers in America anymore. Or any of these things. Maybe you’re changing your tracks, but like there’s not a lot of collaboration between you can get far enough on the two branches of the tree like the fashion on ones where they don’t communicate. For I went to Hartford art school for my MFA. I was at the International Center of photography, which is kind of a mistake, but we won’t go into that but one Have its positives was, there is people interested in all this photography there, and all these different branch types. And that, you know, was nice because at one point I’ve played around a little bit of all of it myself personally, you know, all these different types.

Matthew Dols 10:16
I’ve run into this numerous times in my life like, I often say that like generally I don’t get along with most other photographers because a lot of photographers are very catty, and they’re very competitive. And they’re very judgy like I you know, like, for instance, I went to San Francisco Art Institute, I walk into my first class Linda Connor. I love Linda Connor. However, our first interaction did not go very well because I put up my artwork and she just turns quietly to me goes Are you sure you want to be an artist? And I’m like, Oh, fuck you. Like seriously Fuck you. Like you like what? You just accepted me into your MFA program? And first critique you question whether I want to be an artist. Fuck you. So

Andrew Fedynak 11:08
but in the long term different setting though that is that is a educational setting we you on some level should be challenged maybe it could have been said a little better differently by you should be challenged. And you and I can talk about mfas and undergrads where they don’t challenge people they pay the money and the student goes through and gets out at the end. And Linda’s great this Hartford was greatest Carrefour had has about a quarter failure rate for each of its you know, each of its courts you need to its classes. It’s incredibly difficult because of that. But it’s amazing because of that. And so as SFA is very difficult because of things like,

Matthew Dols 11:48
yeah, don’t get me wrong. I was furious with her. I mean, like, but the thing is, is what I realized after graduation, so like it took me a couple years to even figure this out, was that that was her way of trying to motivate me. At the time at the exact moment. It was her way. Like I felt it was her way of insulting me. But in reality that was sort of her teaching methodology that she would you try to like it was actually the entire programs teaching methodology, which was they broke the first year, they basically broke you down and destroyed you. And then the second year, they rebuilt you.

Andrew Fedynak 12:29
Yeah, it’s the same at Hartford, Hartford was set up about the same way. And that’s a style, it’s a style of teaching. There’s another style of teaching where the professor and the student break down the walls and are collaborating together more and that was the style pre the 1980s, minor White was working in that style among many, many others in other genres, too, because my background is wider than just photography. And so play we’ve gone away from that with the art stars in the 80s all becoming them professors and then this hierarchy system, not just in photo but but in academia and United States, academia in general, have this you know, the professor is right, and he breaks you down. The professor is rough on you. And yeah, we all took it hard when we were doing this a while ago, my head now but I know some people they’re just still jaded about that experience to this day.

Matthew Dols 13:23
Don’t get me wrong. Like she pissed me she puts me off but then also the some of the other students, they’re pissing me off as well. And I ended up leaving a photography program and switched into the new genre program. And it sounds horribly ironic, I know but, but the it was the best actually education I ever got. I’ve said this numerous times that but caveat that I already had a BA in studio art, then I had a BFA in photography, and then I went for my MFA. And when I got there, having the foundation of the studio arts and the emphasis in photography, then being able to go into a new genre class, where the focus was on what makes good art, in any medium of expression, was the greatest education and but having already that foundation, so like, I don’t like those new genre interdisciplinary, bachelor degrees, I think those are a horrible idea. But if you have a foundation in general studies or some specialization, then you go into a master’s and have that broader interdisciplinary education. I think it’s very beneficial. Did I mention by the way, I’m also a professor, I know your professor Yeah. Okay,

Andrew Fedynak 14:36
good. I don’t teach you I’m not a professor. I’m almost considered a retired or Renegade Professor as a joke among some of my colleagues because I hadn’t taught I have taught I’ve never taught full time no one will hire me. But there’s also very few places to get the jobs anymore but that’s the world now you know, so that’s been that’s, that’s the problem in academia. In America, so I’m not telling anything like any of your podcast listeners don’t already know.

Matthew Dols 15:05
It’s horrible. I mean, I, I went when I went to school, so I was in school late a late 90s, early 2000s. It was there were still tenured positions, were still full time employment is for teachers and all that good stuff. And like, That stuff is just gone. Like there’s those schools want to hire even full time professors, much less tenure track professors, because they don’t want to pay the health benefits. They don’t want pay the retirement funds, they don’t want to pay their subs. So every, like, I’ve been looking around for jobs that back in the US and they’re all adjunct like there are almost no full time position. You

Andrew Fedynak 15:42
tell me how you how you can live off of 30 $100 for three credit hours, you tell me how you can live off of that. You 30 $100 for three credit hours, but you’re only allowed to teach two classes a semester

Matthew Dols 15:55
by working with multiple schools. If the multiple schools are higher you but if the multiple schools are even within the driving range that you could work in if you live in a region where there are multiple schools like

Andrew Fedynak 16:05
I do, it’s not sustainable. It hasn’t it hasn’t been in years, and it’s a problem going back over a decade. We’re not going to solve it on the podcast, I say that it’s like world peace or something. It’s partially the universities becoming corporations and at the at the administration level and talking about not necessarily the teaching level and and becoming focused on that dollar and property value. You know, like, what they can buy property. And that’s this is a problem all over the United States. So not bashing anybody. So

Matthew Dols 16:41
not anybody specific just,

Andrew Fedynak 16:43
this is an overall issue. But similar to there being an overall issue where art is really popular right now. And I don’t mean popular, but I mean, popular to the masses, it is become cool to be an artist. When you and I are growing up. Everyone wanted to be a musician. We all wanted to be musicians. It was cool to be a musician. We all wanted to be a new position. I thought I wanted to try to play guitar. I can’t play guitars. It’s not even pretend I can’t keep a beat. But I played drums. Exactly. We all want it to be that because that was cool. And then in about round 2010 2011, but really, maybe it became really cool to be an artist. And I mean that from like, masses, from the ethos and collective consciousness like and so now it was that’s the new thing, like being a musician. So now we are like all the musician friends of ours who hated the fact that we all wanted to be musicians, you know, you’re always like, oh God, another band GarageBand trying to start up. It’s kind of like that, but with artists now, and everyone can do that. And this great democratization of it, though, can be a beautiful thing and generates some amazing things. But it also waters everything down and makes it a lot harder to find the good work. But that’s what I realized one day is that we you know, everyone was just trying to be a musician, but trying to be an artist now or a photographer. So you know,

Matthew Dols 18:12
indeed, what made the words curate are now part of social media and everything else in people’s lives. So like the the terms that were segregated for many years in the arts world are now have now become part of pop culture.

Andrew Fedynak 18:26
Yeah. And some of its social media that did this. It’s not entirely like I said, this is a gradual thing. It’s a lot has to do with we all have cameras in our pockets. I don’t shoot with that. I’ve never shot with that. I had a cell phone for a few years recently, until recently, I didn’t have a camera. But that democratization in combination with social media, which is I’m a little younger than you is my generations fault. We built it Sorry about that. I apologize.

Matthew Dols 18:54
But mixed blessing.

Andrew Fedynak 18:56
I used to live next to guys who went to school was Zuckerberg. So you know, it’s it’s you know, that really is it is not it’s a horrible thing. It’s it’s, it communicates a little bit with people but he creates this addictive gamification and this ability to everyone now all they do is just promote themselves. We’re no longer artists, we’re supposed to be brands. And when I got into this we were about making art and I still very much the foundation of guitar presses about making photobooks We are not a brand. We are not sitar press is not about a lifestyle company would tote bags and and selling you associated other things that I will not list but they could be jam, olive oil,

Matthew Dols 19:40
and coffee. Wait, wait, wait, you’re a book company and you’ve never created a tote bag.

Andrew Fedynak 19:46
Every t shirts. We did t shirts at one point we couldn’t sell them and given them away most of them. We sold some but like no one wanted them. So we ended up giving him away. It was an experiment. I realized we should focus right away. function. Some of these are books, while most others say 80% of the book companies, but there’s about 20%, there are more lifestyle companies, and it’s about the digital brand. They present an articles and information and then trying to essentially tell people why they are, why they think they should be the expert to tell you why this work is important. Instead of letting the work speak for itself, or letting the photography just be really good and be the love of photography, or the love of the art object photo book.

Matthew Dols 20:30
I’m of your generation. So like, to me this all like it’s like, yeah, you’re preaching to the choir here. I’m a friend. I know I’m preaching every to delight mine, I got that within the first five minutes of the podcast. But it’s hard because like, that’s the way the world is going. I mean, I’m constantly battling with the old nature of like social media, in and of itself, the nature of nature, the fact that artists these days, like so like when we were being coming up, artists went to they went, they put their they gave their books, their work, to publishers, or to galleries, and then those people did all the work for them. And there and the artists job was just to produce beautiful things, whatever that was, or not even beautiful, that’s probably a bad word, to make amazing artistic expression of ideas. And then it was the job of the publisher, the gallerist, or whoever else to manage their career, basically. But now, these days, that job has been handed back to us. And not only do we have to make our art, but we also have to become some sort of marketing guru or a brand or whatever. And it’s really annoying.

Andrew Fedynak 21:38
It is and but it’s also very collaborative, and that function no to zaatar Press, because we only published a few books a year, we function as very much, you know, almost like an intimate gallery, almost like representing my artists, and spending time with them. But it is this collaborative effort to get the books out. Because I wasn’t around in the era where the publisher was carrying your weight. And if you talk to some of the great people I’ve worked with, like Robert Lyons, like they’ll talk about that era where they published in and made 50,000 copies, 100,000, you know, numbers you can’t even imagine in addition sizes, and where they were the publisher did all this work. But the reality is, you know, it’s been like this probably since the early 2000s. You know, even before the social media push, and it’s just been this is what it is, you know, we have to work on this together. This is what happens when there’s a million fish in the pool. And that’s why we all have what you need is a tertiary form of income in some way to make money doing things while you’re also making money doing this and all goes into the pot, some people that teaching is their tertiary form of income. For some people, it could be an investment portfolio, some could be an alternative business, I know some friends who have rental properties, I mean, they pay mortgages on that, but the rental property helps enough for the mortgage, and then extra for the art making. I know others who have, you know, I used to know guys who were painters, who would do three days on as an emergency room nurse three days off as a painter, like oil painting, that’s a classic example I forgot about that one, it was a good one, we always have to figure out that balance. And we’re always going to be figuring out that balance between self promotion and branding. And that balance between the purity of making the art form. And it’s some point to me around 2011 or 2013, I was like the purity of the art form is more important to me than bastardizing it to do a whole bunch of commercial work that I wasn’t happy with, I would rather find another way to make money and back strap that or back back boot that onto the you know, on to the making of the books in the art because the books don’t make money so and figure in the photography and do that, which would have been teaching if you know if teaching were different, probably some level of stepping out of teaching wasn’t just a lack of finding positions, but was also a bit of a disconnect to today’s generation. Where is all my nieces and nephews, by the way? I have a lot of I do associate with the generation in that function. But I have a lot of trouble understanding what’s going to their their heads than I mean, I’m talking 18 to 21. Like that group right there. Like that’s what I’m talking about the current group you’d be teaching right now, I have a lot of trouble. That doesn’t make them bad person. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with them. I have a lot of trouble with the logic pattern. The logic structure sometimes, you know, I agree with the opinions, but I don’t know how it got to it sometimes.

Matthew Dols 24:42
Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it’s I think it’s just a generational thing with the generations have changed. Like, I remember my generation, like we took on the the the characteristics of the previous generation, whereas I feel like now there’s been a Huge amount of changes and stuff in one generation, you know, because like, in my generation, there was no such thing as the internet when I was in college. So like, so everything internet related has been since I graduated college. So like, yeah, that’s a huge leaps and bounds of changes, you know, just not just social media, but like everything internet related, is all brand new that was not there when I was young. And they’ve got

Andrew Fedynak 25:24
smartphones since basically birth, almost essentially. And I didn’t even have a cell phone till we were in college. And I had the internet had the internet since 1995. I was on the internet 93 but as a kid, but like, it does change that perspective, you know, is that that smartphone really being you have the computer in your pocket. And then the generational shift, where I have more in common with my baby boomer parents, you know, we’re old, I’m the youngest, as opposed to the next younger generations, and we’re creating these micro generations, and not these bigger generations, they’d like, the academics don’t want to put you into bigger durations. I think technology is shrinking these other friends of mine agree with me on this. And it’s that function, you know, all right. We’re supposed to talk about art. Right, I

Matthew Dols 26:13
was gonna say enough waxing on poetically about our gripes about society. So let’s get to like the the press itself. One of my big questions, of course, always that I have for publishers is just basically how do you find the people you choose to publish? Well,

Andrew Fedynak 26:28
there’s a secret catalog we all have, and we hope, and there’s phone numbers, and we call them. No, that’s not how it works. What really how it works is, it’s all about who you know, and it’s networking. And I hate to say that, and it’s the truth, though, relationship building is how we make connections and how not only do you get work into museums and curations, and galleries, curators and other spaces. It’s also how you make photo books. And how do you get in front of that person, though, and create that connection is what matters as the artist, not as the publisher. And as the artists got to go out to events, you got to go out to portfolio reviews, you need to have friends introduce you and vouch for you. And if you put those together, you might luck out and connect and hit a connection with a publisher, or an individual wants to collaborate with you. We found people at both portfolio reviews, people we knew friends and friends. We’ve asked outright strangers to make books. Also people you know, that were close friends, we’ve done books that were more hands off, we’ve done books were entirely in the mud of our head, you know, so it changes up, you know, but you gotta you got to be out there breaking bread, sending blind submissions, is a function that exists. But it’s the worst way to do it. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it, I’m still doing it. I got mailers in the mail room I got to send out, I’m still doing it. But it is the least functional way to do it. And then social media is the second least functional way after that. The best way is to break bread in person, which is why COVID 19 has been such a big problem. It’s It’s It’s, you know, limited that collaboration and that organic connection, how you meet people, you know, he might be I see someone’s work three or four times before I want to work with them. Point in fact, a book we’re working with Justin for that right now. I reviewed his work at review Santa Fe, looked at him again at medium in San Diego. And then kind of casually I saw the work like kind of like a third time in San Diego like on a bed. Then he was showing it to a colleague of mine to a friend Brandon tibideaux is great photographer and bookmaker and it was showing these beautiful prints. And I was like oh for the third time almost had it sometimes get out of your photo brain and let it relax a little bit. And then you know maybe you’ll make that connection and decide Oh, we should make this book which we’ve been trying working on now for a while. So I have a great example. Some are just cold calls. You know, we we cold email, Jenny riffle. Jenny riffle had a show in new space in Portland, Oregon. I knew Chris Bennett, who was the former founder and CEO of new space photo Center, which is not around anymore. It was an organic and nonprofit photo space. It doesn’t exist in Portland, Oregon anymore. And he had had a show here in it about a year before. She knew a lot of people I knew from the School of Visual Arts in New York. And I cold emailed her and said I want to make this book. Let’s make this book. And that’s an A great example of a great relationship. I almost see it’s not almost it’s about what projects you want to work on, you know. So that’s probably your next question.

Matthew Dols 29:57
No, that was not my next one. We could you can ask, you can answer that question.

Andrew Fedynak 30:02
Yeah. It’s about what people ask me all the time. What do I publish? Not how you just how you find people. But what do you want to publish? And it’s about what interests me what projects do I want to say something about. And I want to say something about maybe aging in pictures from the next day or more of a political statement, like days before days after, or the environment and Everglades, just some examples, health or nutrition and homesick. These are some prevailing themes that I wanted to dialogue about, which is part of why I wanted to make those books with those individuals or those projects interested me. And it’s got to be something I want to work because you’re gonna work on it for a year and a half, you know, maybe minimum, and you’re going to promote them and work with them intimately, almost in a collaborative gallery sense for two to three years afterwards, in this small press format, that I’m in bigger small press publishers a little different model. And then the bigger publishers, like passion have a completely different model. But in my model, that’s kind of how it is. And, yeah, you want to make sure you’re almost vetting the person’s personality to like, Who do you want to spend time with?

Matthew Dols 31:15
But that’s one question I often have, which is basically, when you meet an artist, and let’s say, the work is amazing, like, like, earth shattering, like oh, my God, this is amazing. I totally want to publish a book with this person. But they’re a little shit to work with. Like they’re arrogant, or they’re, they don’t follow deadlines or whatever. Like, what’s more important like that, that they are pleasurable and enjoyable to work with, or that they make amazing work,

Andrew Fedynak 31:48
you hope that you have pleasurable and enjoyable to work with with amazing work. Always Yeah. It’s not necessarily one or the other always, it’s not like one of those three things you get to pick but you can only have to, yeah, you don’t pick the word just because it’s some name, at least we don’t. And one business model and photo book making and their number of medium sized to large size, small press publishers do this. They’re just pick famous names and publish them because it’s going to generate revenue, to make their books, which all look the same, to make the next set of books. And we can talk about the other four business models of photobook, maybe if you want, but the point is, they don’t care, because they’re not intimately working with these people, they’re actually got a few levels of shells away from the director, or the designer, even from that person. You know, I’m intimately working shoulder to shoulder with the people were with their, they can be separated by a lot and not even interact with them. So what’s better, it’s better to have the person that you want to spend the time with, in hindsight, 2020. Yeah, say that, without dropping names in hindsight, 2020, it’s better to have the person that you would want to spend the time with, but you don’t know who that’s gonna be. You try to make an educated guess, for the quality of the work. But also, a lot of the portfolio review, everybody is character analysis, and I’m looking at the work but I’m also looking at do I want to spend X amount of time with you. Not gonna say I haven’t made mistakes, I’m not gonna say I haven’t. But generally everyone is been really great to work with. In our company, thankfully, we haven’t had anyone that’s been so bad that we’ve killed the project, that usually that does happen, it’s very common. Ask some of my other friends, they’ll tell you stories about killing projects with stiva lever. You know, they’re the ones they didn’t want to work with him and killed it. And I’m not gonna, that’s not my story to tell. But But the point is, he happens everywhere, just like your print run can get damaged in publishing, it can happen, you know, these stories are very common, actually. No, we’ve had a good time with people and but you want to find the person that you think the work is really interesting and good, and is going to be a good fit.

Matthew Dols 34:09
I mean, I remember being a young, budding artists go into portfolio reviews to having my work reviewed. And I remember going there and thinking that they were there to look at my work and that what I like, the way I looked and my personality, and the things I said was not as important. And of course now with age and wisdom, I have learned that of course, like you say it’s partly a character thing, like you’re trying to figure out like, is this bird? Not only is his work great, but is this person somebody you want to work with? Because, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes in my career, and but the primary one that I talk about way too much on the podcast is is that at a certain point in my life, I was a horribly arrogant shit. I was like, just I thought way too highly of myself for no fucking reason and they’d hurt me Like, uh, you know, people basically like, people didn’t want to work with me, and I don’t blame them one bit. At that time, I was probably not enjoyable to work with. So, you know, it happens,

Andrew Fedynak 35:12
it happens, we all go through dark periods, you know, I have a dark period too. And I feel like my time when I was living in New York was a very dark period where, you know, I was angry at everything, often all the time, and people didn’t want to be around me. I’ve apologized to people in hindsight about that sometimes. And, but, but the portfolio reviews are character analysis, but it is what maybe perhaps art is become too obsessed with the presentation and how we look and not enough on the quality of the work and we can trade off, we all make mistakes, and the ability is to learn from it, and to move forward. And to try to be more understanding and more, you know, just move forward.

Matthew Dols 35:58
We try. But unfortunately, lots of times we fail, but always, we always fail. That’s how we learn. But we hope we learn from our mistakes and don’t fail twice. In the same way scattered get back up, you know? Indeed. All right, you keep mentioning that you’re a small publishing house. And when you say that, but I’m thinking you’re talking about like, addition sizes, like the print run, is that what you mean by that? So small

Andrew Fedynak 36:26
is no longer designated by the size of the editions, and it hasn’t been for probably 10 years now. Okay, shows how out of date I am, it’s okay. Well, it has to do how technology’s changed in printing. And people print edition sizes that they want necessarily what their market can hold, what they can sell to not necessarily just per cost value, was always to do cost value until recently, small is based not only just on how many employees you have, but what your goal might be some publishers their goal, they’ve been around as long as me were to be a heavyweight publisher, a wanting to put out 25 titles a year, they want to be the next title. That was max goal from day one. That’s what they became. That’s Stanley Barker’s goal. That’s what they becoming one. Some of these are wonderful people, this is not a negative. It’s just that was their business structure. That was their business plan. And there are others who want that goal can’t achieve it. I’ll go into those names, who who are striving for it and are overly obsessed with names and money and power. But some of us and there’s many of us who are like me, are we’re all small press and small. And that term, small press, all of those, including Stanley Barker, are small press versus the real publishing industry, which is what that term originated from. They mean like versus like ban teen and, you know, Penguin Random House. Yeah, we’re not publishing at that scale. And so that’s what small press man, you can be very profitable, large, small press though, which is what I’m saying. And so but then there are these smaller small those like heavyweight small presses and prizefighting. And we’re like, you know, featherweight small presses. And there are people like me, image lists me, Skinner box, there’s a whole lot of different people that are my size, we might only have two employees, and only put out one to five titles a year, depending on the size of the title. And that’s fine. And we vary what we’re doing here, because we’re not worrying about that end goal, that monetary amount as much as we are making the beauty of the product. Yeah, and it’s a choice. It’s a business model choice, it’s a decision choice, and one is not better than another, as long as people are realistic. So it’s not tied any more to editions per se. There’s an older set of photo book collectors and older publishers who think it still is, and isn’t it? Because, yes, the cost value, of course, more you make a book on an offset, press, the cheaper it gets still, generally, generally, it’s not always exactly the same. But we now have many different ways to make books, many different types of printing. As a tar press, we’ve used almost all of them accidentally, non attention. Yeah, that

Matthew Dols 39:22
was going to be my question is like so what methodologies are you using? Are you using, you know, sort of print on demand kind of styles? Or are you doing like the large print runs that you’d then wait for the shipment from France or China or wherever it comes from?

Andrew Fedynak 39:39
print on demand refers to a business structure style, so we’re not going to use that term. That’s the wrong term. Minus you’re referring to is probably the difference between what we call digital press and traditional offset press. Though it’s also called did digital offset to depending on what you use because some of the digital offsets are using blankets and plants. and things like that. So, but there’s a series of different technologies is four or five, digital tech, not printing technologies. There’s two, four really offset or money missing offset, we’ll call them analog traditional printing technologies because rotogravure is not an offset, but you have offset and they have UV offset, which is ultraviolet offset, which is becoming pretty much the standard in the industry. But at one point or another, we let the form and the function of our project we’re designing dictate not only design, unique art object design, also the addition size, what audience we think it’ll reach based on maybe what the subject of the book is, but also what the audience of the photographer, like what their following is, but also what we want the intent of the project to be. And that’s what’s more important, we envision a project to be a certain way and then we try to find design elements or printing styles to fit that we have printed on 70s offset machines, also printed labels for Sawyer spice containers. Okay, sour spice containers, you might remember sour spices, but we’ve also done stuff on the most high end UV presses, both commodities and mitsubishis. that exists. We’ve done stuff on Heidelberg, but we’ve also printed on indigos. Next presses do and the Canon presses which are really just Xerox phasers. Basically, in we varied it all up. We’ve also worked on newsprint, digital projects, as well. And then ourselves carbon county is letterpress and inkjet and handmade boxes, carbon county folio box, which was done in house all intentionally.

Matthew Dols 41:51
Well, that’s something I noticed too is like you have a pretty wide range late majority of your books seem to be in the $50 or less range. But then you have a couple random ones that are like $1,200. But with but they have the you know, the custom box and a print in the middle this guy sounds like there’s a reason for the price being so hot. But as a general, I would say your, your your catalog is pretty affordable. Let’s say

Andrew Fedynak 42:16
it’s funny, because people don’t think so. Really, yes, the average individual right now in the industry doesn’t want to spend more than 35 to $40 for a book, which is very, very hard to make a book that can break even after you have to double the price and do all the jazz with the mathematics. Some people say it should be a fifth of the price that’s almost impossible to achieve. You can tell me where to make a hardcover book. Even in China, for $4 that you want to sell for $35. For less than 5000 units, please tell me, I want to know I’ll be there tomorrow. Because we’ve printed everywhere we’ve printed in Germany we’ve printed in Spain, we printed in the United Kingdom, we print in the United States, I’ve worked on projects in South Korea, I’ve worked on projects in Italy. But yeah, you do go where the money is and where the cost value is. But you you print what you want, which you need, you know,

Matthew Dols 43:15
do you actually travel to those presses that? So you’re very hands on and you’re on the press floor? Yeah, we are.

Andrew Fedynak 43:26
We’re unique art object book. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about making these books that are these beautiful pieces of art, which means the image reproduction quality is very important for us. I can’t say that about every small press publisher. But don’t do that. They don’t care. But many do. No, they don’t. They don’t because they just want to make it close enough and move on and make an affordable, softcover knock it out. But we did where we go on press for every book, you if the artists can come the artists come sometimes the artist can’t come to scheduling. And it’s just me, you should always do that. technology’s changed a little bit though, there’s UV presses really hold tight. You know, part of it was because things drift a lot and the color is getting missing. Those UV presses are so tight, you really, you really can send wet proofs out overseas and look at them and probably could get away with a very decent book without being on press now. And I mean, the last like three, four years as opposed to 15 years ago, those 70s presses you had to be there to check every form, though, because it would draft in between the same form. Like we had an issue on a book with that one time among many fun printing issues I can talk about but binding issues. But yeah, it’s not you try to find the press that you want to work with that. We’re not you, your publishers doing this. You’re not doing any of this. You know, you’re being told this from your publisher, and they’re hopefully informing you and talking to you transparent Normally, we’re transparent company, we base our concept on this idea where I’m informing everyone, I don’t know how to publish books without educating the people I make books with. And it’s why the people we’ve published with have gone off to their own things sometimes after, because it’s like, I don’t know how to do it without it kind of being like workshop, not only in color theory, but also in publishing, because nothing has ever come to us completed. Even if, let’s say I liked your work. No one’s ever had their files up to spec. A one person has not gonna say who it was. And it’s not who you think. And we’ve always sit them down, and they come and we go through sessions of color editing, and working, and often maybe rescanning. cut me off.

Matthew Dols 45:49
I know, I have a question about that or your mind? No, for years, I’ve had this like, ongoing problem that I have with digital contemporary, professional digital cameras, which they only shoot in RGB. Yeah, but all output is done in cm y k. So why the fuck Can’t they come up with a sensor that shoots and CMI k in order to make color matching and output easier, because that’s

Andrew Fedynak 46:18
not how the system was designed 100 years ago. Now being serious, it’s all based on LAB color system, which is based on RGB driven aids from essentially, it’s all about how things are designed is the same way Why? Why is the DPI a certain DPI versus lines on an Epson printer? Well, it’s based on the technology and how it was designed in the 80s. to the present day, you’d have to start from scratch and redesign something that’s why it hasn’t shifted that way. It’s a good question, though. And it never will. Because when people learn a system and is a color Consortium, what ICC stands for, there’s a system you’re going to be stuck with. But just look, it’s not that difficult to understand color, try doing black and white, try tone separations, then you have a different perception. That’s color conversion for CMI k environment depends on the device, the output you’re going to be printing on. And then obviously the medium it’s going on, whether it’s an inkjet, which is just another printing process, the same as offset, the actual steps are almost the same.

Matthew Dols 47:23
I now but I mean, like I was teaching, and I tried to teach students how to print like, and they thought it was just like, like a five minute tutorial, they thought I’d just show them how to hit print and lay it out on the piece of paper. And like, I ended up having to teach it, it took like eight weeks like total like 16 sessions, to just give them the foundations of how to make a good print.

Andrew Fedynak 47:48
And likely 90% will never get it. And I I started in film, and then I went to digital and I don’t actually work in digital very often, I still very much work in film and have a full chemical LAB color black and white darkroom. And a full digital lab that you’re sitting in right now. That helped me create a foundation having been in a color dark room having done worked in other mediums, but you just have to either gonna have the type of brain that can take photos, and not overly think about it in a Zen aspect, and then be able to be technical when you have to be technical. Or you’re the type that’s an intuitive photographer, and you’re not technical and you you you pay printers to help you basically is what happened. And that’s why there’s a whole world of fine art printers. You know, there’s different people with different skill sets, you know, some of the people I’ve published, I’m not as good as photographers they are. They can’t edit a file, save their lives, some of them, but they’re amazing photographers shooting wise and I will never be as good as that. And I’m well aware of that. Doesn’t mean I’m still not out making photographs, hopefully three times a week.

Matthew Dols 49:03
Taking a step back, you had mentioned a long time ago that you that most people like do other jobs to fund their projects and things like this. Do you work other jobs? Oh, yeah,

Andrew Fedynak 49:12
we all have other jobs, side gigs, side jobs. I have to check on a warehouse every so often then I have a job maintaining as a side, side job, among other jobs, but yeah, as an example.

Matthew Dols 49:26
Okay. Just wondering, any topics you want to talk about or expand on at this point? Yeah, I mean, you want

Andrew Fedynak 49:34
to make a photo because you love making books and you want to see the project not because you think it needs to be a monograph. And then you feel like it’s an endpoint. There’s also different photo book business models publish your business models. You mentioned there are

Matthew Dols 49:49
four of them.

Andrew Fedynak 49:50
What are five depending on you talk about it. I work in a collaborative business model with my publishers so some books we pay everything for some are collaborating Often on a 5050 system, not always, but often. But that’s just how it kind of organically happened in some function. We didn’t necessarily design it that way. Some of the other stuff was very designed that was not one of the other business models is what we call the pay to play model, which is very big in Europe, as well as the United States. But in Europe, he it’s a little more less of a ripoff, you know, and if you go to some of the German I have dropped names with some of the German painted play companies, you will get a beautiful book, when it costs 18,000 euro or something to make? Well, that’s about right, you know, 9000 for the book, 4000 for the designer, 3000 for the company overhead, I mean, a little promotion for 2000 18,000, they’re not ripping you off for much, does not cost $30,000 to make a photo book, unless your book is got gold, or something on it. Or it’s all handmade, like Everglades has seven handmade pieces in each book, which is part of why it was expensive. But it doesn’t cost that and so there’s this pay to play model where people are asking us a lot of American publishers trying to do this, oh, give us a lot of money. And here’s your books. And you’re in there just cranking out these literally, paper wrap covered. P you are glue bound Chinese printed books, which will visually sometimes look good the images, but they don’t have a lot of design to them. And it’s a scam. It’s a scam, though, right? The same contract every single person they say?

Matthew Dols 51:40
Well, one of the things that I’ve run into is that a lot of people, a lot of creative people, they think that publishing the book is the end, they think like oh, I just want my book published, but they don’t realize that that’s literally just the beginning of the project.

Andrew Fedynak 51:57
Yeah, you’re right about that. It is the step of getting the book out there is actually about the same amount of time as making the book designing and making the book and printing the book and all that stuff. We talked about the match prints and the color correction going on press of the act of making a book. And that alone, the act of us, the photographer shooting it for 10 years, like some of the people I’ve worked with eight years, 10 years, some of these projects are from very long shooting time, some have been short from the books, we publish, homesick, then in their very short shooting block periods. Some very long, you know, when Justin facettes book comes out, he will be he shot that for over a decade, he was something like eight or nine years for Jenny riffles scavenger it was eight and a half years for Everglades or nine years for Everglades. So I mean, what the photographer shooting, then you’ve got the book production block period, like a movie, cinema, which I came out of like, and then you’ve got the promotion period. And I often joke that I only have time to really do four things, I have time to design and make books, I have time to sell books, I have time to make my own work, or I have time to work on my house.

Matthew Dols 53:11
That’s it.

Andrew Fedynak 53:13
That’s the only has he only only have enough time to do one of the four I have to pick which one each day. Have those four. That’s the game, you know. So you’re right takes a long time.

Matthew Dols 53:25
It does. Oh, yeah, I believe me a lot. As I said, like, I mean, I know a lot of artists that had like, they’ve gone through all the effort, they find a publisher, they got a publisher, they printed a book, and then they’re sitting in their garage. Well, it’s true of everybody. There, there are more books than there are venues for people to put them in. I mean, that’s just a fact, regardless of how good the book is, well, but they just don’t realize that like, it’s like, it’s like a writer who writes a book, and then they need to go on a book tour like so they still need to, like, advertise and market and publish and get and get the book to the people. They can’t just sit there and think I have a book you should come and want it from me like they still have to be actively participating in getting people interested in the book. And that’s something that I think a lot of artists think that’s not necessary.

Andrew Fedynak 54:14
Yet certainly the first year and a half of the company, I didn’t realize how much marketing and promotion was necessary. And I still have the theory, which I still think is a pure, more pure thought that the art should stand on its own play. Regardless of that we did bring in marketing and social media individuals. And then the companies expanded and contracted at times. But the reality is, yeah, you know, you do have to sell a book. You do have to get stuff out there. You go to the book fairs, which is a way to meet people and collaborate. By the way, another function of where to meet people is a book fair, you do the book fairs, but book fairs are not some sustainable business model. You know, you’re lucky if you make 15% returns. return on your investment for the total fair, if you do that, and you usually go to the fair with the idea of paying your own way, and you’re just hope to cover the cost of the table maybe and for my case, I tried to turn it into shooting true photography for making trips. So whenever I’ve been traveling always, these places you go to these fairs and you know, as a publisher, you hope to build up to what we call the Big Four fairs la our book fair New York art book fair, which used to be a pad which is now Paris photo a pad and Paris photo or Perry photo is a photo guys like to say, Paris photo, which actually is a series of fares Paris photo is bigger in the function, like Art Basel, Miami, we participate in poly copies, shout out to those guys, cuz I’m a big fan of poly copies, which is Sebastian, Howe and Laurent who I will forget his last name. And I will apologize around if you listen to this. But amazing guys who also were for years running the photobook, fair ARL and because we had European connections, and we I always was, I’m always about not just the world being flat and all of us you’re connecting. We had our books in our or through our European contact, Julia Bianca is amazing photographer at Italy, who was an old friend, we have been at ICP together in New York. She’s the International Center of photography. And so we were able to get into poly copies during Paris photo, which was like the first time in American publisher had been there and things like that, because we make these unique art object books. I love those guys. I love that space. A lot of people would love to be at offprint Paris, they want to be at Paris photo proper. That’s not a goal of us. Our goal is to remain small to prepare an intimate to remain nimble and guerrilla and be able to jive and work around and be able to do like we did last year kind of go dormant for 20 because there’s no market. There’s no place no one was buying books. It’s a luxury. It’s a luxury item. By definition, a photo book is sorry to break that to everybody. And so we went dormant somewhat to to get a better idea of if we would still have a country if there would still be an economic market. I think the we’re still the jury’s still out on those two, I would I hope they stabilize. But I’ve got a ways to go as of the recording of this in February of 2021. And so, you know, but we still we have to start making books again regardless, but you know, the book fairs are a fun object, but a lot of people enjoy it more for the unquantifiable advertising amount, and in marketing or something of a term something as unquantifiable. You didn’t make your sales number, but 30% maybe we could have made that number is like an unquantifiable promotional sales number kind of in some function. And that that is important to book fairs, but it’s also exhausting. In 2019, we were releasing carbon counting, which we built in 2018 and into 2019. And a path photography show a pad decides to have their bookfair and Lr bookfair week apart. Now this only affects photo book publishers, because the other publishers at Le are bookfair ziens wonderful LGBTQ magazines, which I love and things like that. They You know, they’re not at a pad and a pad gallerists aren’t at best. You know, Eliot Booker put the small sub Venn diagram of photo book publishers were so we had to figure out how to move all a product. Sunday night to be there Wednesday night to set up Thursday morning in LA from New York to LA now, it would have been $900 overnight at all. In a normal setting. You might have immediate mail that Oh, but you can’t do that with that kind of timetable. I didn’t want to set up two products. So we put everything back a car we drove across country three days. JOHN Sanderson in me that says have a crazy things photo book fairs do like when we do public copies are hauling all his product in Europe and over up spiral staircase and things it’s like, it’s on a boat. It’s this great boat, you know, probably copies is and it’s a really kind of more underground community because that was the world I came out of is Zen photography, Zen art, underground art. And that will always be the foundation summit will always be a little rougher company. Because of that and rougher my own work because of that background in nonprofit art worlds that were you know, community but were more underground in that sense than a traditional refined spaces that some people came out of. They only ever worked in that?

Matthew Dols 1:00:01
Yeah, I noticed you ran a community darkroom? Yes,

Andrew Fedynak 1:00:04
I started in ran with the time was known as the film mechanic studios, community public dark film mechanic studios public darkroom. And it is changed hands four times since then, from what I can tell it’s a little iffy. I have no connection to it. It’s run as the Asheville darkroom it’s changed locations. But yeah, it was an idea. Originally, I had made a movie, complete failure. But we’ll go into that we made a movie all around the world. And I started his community darkroom education space, it was part of a larger nonprofit building in space in Asheville, called the flag gallery, Fine Arts Center and film mechanic studios. And so they have something like 28 Studios, someone’s gonna correct me about that in that building at the time. And so we were all kind of collaboratively. It was a community, sometimes for grudgingly sometimes, like siblings, not always necessarily always happy with each other. But regardless, there was an active community. I come out of that. I spent a decade in Asheville, North Carolina. And I spent about five or six years of that working in this art community, which was all mediums and all these things. And Suzanne, and art was a big part in that community still is, but it’s also it was about 250 artists in this kind of river arts district that was branded and called that. And then it gentrified itself. And, you know, there’s still some artists there. I’m not saying there aren’t are a lot of people there. But people move out of town, people live further out, when you get jobs, and the golden era of that where you’d like to $200 800 square foot studios or $200, things like that, is gone. And that was probably the end of that era from the 80s in the 90s. And this is the early aughts, we’re talking about that’s the end of it. This was the death cry of that I’ve been at the death cry of a lot of things in life, the death cry of New York’s art community in Brooklyn, the death cry of perhaps the photo book world. And I’ve been sometimes at this weird inner junction that like when I get to it, it’s probably got three years before we left on the side of the road for dead. Hey, it was Asheville is a great place. And we had a community dark room there. But it was very early on, I realized after I only ran it for about a year and a half first year that I could make work or I could run a community education space. I did not have time to do both.

Matthew Dols 1:02:34
I ran a community darkroom for nine years.

Andrew Fedynak 1:02:38
Did you have time to make your own work? Or were you mostly running an administrative space? You know, that’s the irony of it right there?

Matthew Dols 1:02:44
Well, sadly, it was it was a miserable failure. And so I had lots of time, because there just weren’t many people using it.

Andrew Fedynak 1:02:52
So that’s what happened with what with the one I had he was it was financially a failure. And not enough people using it because there’s not enough population base in Asheville, Asheville is a small town, basically a large small town with the smallest of the city sizes, basically a large town. And it’s just not a people that it’s kept running right now through donations and volunteer people who run it’s their own thing. I don’t even know who runs it wonderful people use it. But it was a failure. And years later, I had the benefit of knowing a good friend Chris Bennett of new run, start a new space. We went to graduate school Hartford together Hartford art school. And I we sat down I was like, Hey, man, did I do this entirely wrong? Or like what was it? And we came to the conclusion that no, there just wasn’t enough population or enough monetary money and backers in the city. And, and Asheville, North Carolina in general has always had a problem. There’s not enough grants, there’s not enough money. The Asheville always was just an art colony in the woods, basically. And it still kind of is. And so you know, they’re just, you know, what isn’t an infrastructure to keep something running like that, as opposed to here in Richmond, where there are like two community to our probes in the city. You know, they’re in Richmond, Virginia, where we’re based, there’s like, community printmaking spaces, there’s nonprofits left to right, because they’re ease that found those people who will put money into it slash also a population base to use it. Both are necessary. So yeah, we kind of had a few things going against also it was pre it was pre social media applications. I mean, the social media that was around when we do that was Facebook, that’s it. I mean, my space, nobody’s using that anymore. It was Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all those things. They were just being birthed. And I sure as hell wasn’t using them other people might have been, I don’t remember any of my friends using them either. So I know from my look at when they start like you know, you look at the dates, technically some of them started but no one was using them or real. It You know, the so yeah, that was some of it now when you start a space, photo bookstore, maybe a community print space something to different era you’ve got, you know, you got Indiegogo, you’ve got things like Kickstarter, you know which we used Kickstarter to presale platform for john sandersons folio box and booklet carbon county that didn’t exist when I made the short film I tried to do, you know, it didn’t happen it Kickstarter was not around that I think they came around 2010 like, so it’s like, you know, you just had to figure it out, you know,

Matthew Dols 1:05:35
I’m horribly intimidated about the whole like Indiegogo, Kickstarter stuff, because I’m, I’m too, I don’t know, private, proud, maybe like, I feel bad. You know, sort of, like, I feel like, don’t get me wrong, some of the projects on there are phenomenal. And I love being able to support them when I can. But for me, it feels like it’s a begging, like from the the act of like being the person putting the thing up there. I feel like, it’s basically like, I have this great idea. And I can’t do it pretty please, because and I say this because because of the way it’s designed, because it’s based off of like, you put it up there. But then you have to email all your friends and ask them to do it and then ask them to then post it on social media. And so like you literally are just like begging your friends to help you and your relations. And and that to me, that’s very difficult. That’s

Andrew Fedynak 1:06:34
a problem. In general, it that’s my issue I’ve had with Kickstarter for years. And we were never going to do one. And we we used carbon counting booklet just as a presale platform, essentially less than the begging platform. But it’s always been my issue. With that. And then I that’s how I feel the art world in general has become the entire social media is self promotion and begging people to sell stuff. Any idea how many not just like, come by my thing or sell sell sell comes across to me, or linlin submissions, but all three, you know, constantly, it’s part of why I kind of, you’ll notice I don’t have a very large social media presence of my own my personal social media presence, because I can’t stand it. And I find it to be this sickening thing. And we used to have real emotional, physical connections. Since COVID, 19 began that era that we’re in, we are forced to have to use only this. And even I have found myself more connected and more dominantly working through social media, because I have to. I’m aware, even if I don’t like something, I’m aware that this is what’s happening, a media interconnected future of branding. And that’s the future. All you guys that have companies doing that great. That is the future. I get it. It doesn’t mean I like it. And doesn’t mean I want to do it. But I respect it. And I understand it. I couldn’t have said that 10 years ago, but I could say that now, and then be like no, I I get that this is this is where we’re headed. Maybe I’ll just go back in my darkroom.

Matthew Dols 1:08:11
Well, it’s hard that balance of like the amount of time and energy that you put into things like social media, marketing, all that kind of stuff, versus the time energy of making better work. Yeah,

Andrew Fedynak 1:08:21
I don’t see a direct correlation anymore. I think people did more six, seven years ago. And if you talk to off off camera off audio, you talk to people and private about their real numbers. Try to get someone to tell you the real numbers. One advantage of having friends is I actually know a lot of people’s real numbers. But one of the numbers people have been talking about very publicly easy algorithm numbers. You don’t get any hits anymore. You don’t get anyone to see anything. And I mean, some of these great guys I work with in our company, you know, they’re sitting there like Yeah, man, I used to be able to drive sales, I can’t drive anything. So it’s all it’s been flattened this last two years, it’s been about two years is started happening. And that’s where the future’s headed. So I guess I still send out press releases. I still do it the old fashioned way preview books go out to we still do that whole arm of the publishing, but I still send blind submissions out myself my own work. You know, the company’s goal was always to sitarist goal was always to make these projects these people that I wanted to see like Lisa Elmo, I wanted to see Everglades print. So I went made it. I like George Harrison, you know, funding the Life of Brian. And I wanted to see that book. So I went and did it. And with Lisa it’s a beautiful book. I’m very happy we did it every day. But that’s not always everyone’s goals. Some is for their company to kind of half promote their own work. We had the first two books that were my own work, but that was just because we had them you know, it was just kind of how most companies start you talk to TP W and Paul chic. Yeah, the very first TBL bu is a Paul sheet But there hasn’t really ever been one sense. But that’s a normal origin story. And so but it’s a question of what are they promoting and someone like Paul is promoting all these great artists that he wants to work with. And someone like me, it’s the same thing. I slipped in a book two years ago, because I slipped a book in a mind real quietly, but you’ll notice there’s never been a big advertising push for it, because I don’t feel that’s not the goal, the company, you know, I can slip a book in occasionally. But it was not about them trying to look at our stuff, because that was not why he got into it, you know?

Matthew Dols 1:10:34
Alright, so wrapping this up, I have like two little last things. So the one is the question of three creative people, artists, whatever, that you think you should get some more exposure like that, you know, that maybe are not as well known as you feel like they should be. And a little bit of why you think there’s so interesting or people should be paying more attention to them. You see, that’s when you put me on the spot. Yeah, I’m with you on that.

Andrew Fedynak 1:11:05
There are always people that are not being seen enough. A lot of who we published have been those people, you know, they’re not I’m not gonna say they’re emerging some very much middle career artists. But maybe they didn’t have the gatekeepers that let them elevate them, which is something that frustrates me. Supposedly, I’m a bottom tier gatekeeper. I think that’s probably true, but not intentionally that I go about trying to do that. But retrospect, you fall into things I didn’t like, anyways, you fall into things, but three artists, you know, people aren’t necessarily looking enough air or me or maybe I just think people should look at maybe that’s a better way of saying, I’m a big fan of Joshua Rashad McFadden’s work. When I met him, he had just done that first book with SEPA editions. And we were on a panel discussion together as a wonderful, wonderful guy. Now he’s doing amazing journalism, work on Black Lives Matter and the protests, the Floyd protests, and teaching, and all these other things. I think he’s in upstate New York now, play. That is an issue in the United States, I can’t speak to every country, I only play in Europe working I don’t work in Europe. Almost every day of the week, I do not work in Europe, I play in Europe, when I go to work. Wait, we had an issue with photographers of color, and then photographers of color, people of color not being represented enough in the photo industry and something I said a few years back through four or five years ago. And I tried, tried to. And you know, that’s an example of something. So when I see his work, I’m like, yeah, this is work that needs to be seen. This is stuff I nominated from him for PDM 30. He doesn’t even know that. It’s probably gonna listen to this and find that out. But he didn’t make it because it was just my nomination. I’m not the one who selects the selectors. That’s the next tier up, everyone pull bunch of people nominate, then back then the editor, what’s his face name just went out of my head, he selects it, him and his team. And then then you have that list that used to be like 15 people, right? Pdn 30, probably isn’t going to ever be one again, who knows, maybe there was I’m not keeping up on the games in the contest world. But that’s person whose work is really important to see. But then there are guys, I think of like Joe Rodriguez out of the International Center of photography, he’s got a couple of books that you would never think of him as a book photographer. The books were almost like, in caps in some function to long form editorial projects, long form documentary projects, amazing educator out of there. But like, there are guys who are well known or who have influenced so many students, but are not ever going to be remembered in this Pantheon that just celebrates, you know, Stephen shore and celebrates, you know, what’s his face, he’s got the new show up at ICP, coming up right now is when right out of my head. And I know kicked me later. But the point is, to celebrate these big names Nan golden, these elevated names, who are great workers in their own right. But we do create a history on this history is writing other people out. And if you go and talk to someone like Jerry Altman, or someone like that, Jerry, they’ll be like, well, one point they were in that Pantheon in history, you know, 10 years, they’re out there. They’re being written out by the current history writers and curators and the ironies, can you name enough people of color or ethnic people in that history and you can’t, and you can’t not elevate it to that same level and only now we can temporarily elevating the Dubois Bay’s and people like that up to that. I mean, like as we speak, and so Joshua was working someone like Joe Rodriguez his work. In Joe I studied on I had to class Um, like, you know, those are the some of the people that need to be, you know, some of the teachers that maybe they’re known in that world and influenced a lot of people, but will only be remembered by their students, we hope they’ll be remembered, but they’re never gonna make it big, you know? And that’s that question is do we should we make it big, I’ve never been my goal. But a lot of people’s it was, you know, nothing to get you a Saturn being in a room with a bunch of men in their 60s who knew everybody but never did anything, or never made it in their minds. But air quotes, but yeah, a third name. I mean, man, that’s when you give me on the spot, I gotta come up with names. To think about it a second. And I see this is my problem. This is why I have I keep, we keep a very big library, not just to teach from she’s also to teach from where I used to teach more classes, I had a photo book education group and stuff too, before COVID, it’ll be going for about four or five years before COVID, which is a good run. But the point is, I would go down there, and I would reference the library to remember the names. And that’s what I do. And I go look at the what’s on the shelf and go, Oh, you know, some Maris or somebody or Oh, yeah, Bernice, have a you know, because I remember the images and the faces. And that’s how my brain works, which is why I’m sequence really well too, and things like that. But like, I don’t, I’m bad with the whole, perfectly having the whole history memorize verbatim, even though I haven’t studied it, because I’ll know that image and then a decade later, think about it,

Matthew Dols 1:16:40
it’s perfectly fine to names is more than enough.

Andrew Fedynak 1:16:44
I mean, people people could pay more attention to I mean, you know, here’s, here’s, I’ll tell you, the third person, you know, people need to pay more attention to the art that’s happening in their own back door, in their own communities. I started at a regional community level, and I did everything you can imagine to make money. So photographer, those first couple of years, we’re not gonna talk about that on this podcast. And we’re gonna go forward though, and say, if you want to be better at your skill set, you try to study to be better with people, right? And that’s what happened to me. And I ended up in New York studying and doing it. And I’d already had a studio before that, and assistance in New York, we did that. And then we came to where the company is based in Richmond, Virginia. But the point is it that community level, like in Richmond, there are hundreds of photographers, I don’t know. Those are the photographers we need to be paying attention to to. We don’t pay attention to them because they don’t fit within our academia or are at the tear that we are at. Maybe some people work very hard to get to that tier. I know guys who went undergrad to grad grad to teaching teaching, to representation. And I mean, they never worked in the real world. They never had a studio practice. They never spent you’re sharing studios with building sleeping on floors without insulation on the wall. They never built dark rooms. They never do any of this because the school provided the darkroom that’s part of why that we never built that, or in school provided the Epson 9890 or something. And so, but there’s a whole world that we forget sometimes of photographers that are hobbyist amateurs or professional amateurs, pure hobbyist, professional make money doing it for a living, you can be a master or you can be an amateur, you can be a hobbyist master. Well, my good friends and collectors in this town here is a master black and white printer. But that’s not his job. He’s been an emergency room doctor for 60 years. That was his real job. But he didn’t want to bastardize the art, like it’s a purity of it to him. He could have he could have tried to work up a chain wasn’t his goal. But there’s a whole world of guys doing that. Now, digitally tonight talk about my old friend is 78. I’m talking about guys that are in their 20s and their 30s with a seven R’s and five D Mark fours and whatever the kids are using these days, and they’re out there on the streets photographing Black Lives Matter. They’re out there photographing the Floyd out there photographing protests. There’s a whole world of photographers, and they don’t have their they only exist on the social media platforms. They only exist to their own community locally and culturally, which is where I came from, and then went away from not entirely intentionally happened gradually. And those are the photographers we need to pay attention to and it’s true in every city, every city, India, China, Germany, everywhere. There is Those photographers that maybe some and there’s always a lot of shit, let’s say of that group, probably, let’s say half a shit, I’m not saying they’re good. But they still need to be recognized for what you’re doing and recognized and respected on some level. But then you got to find that 10% of those for say 300 is a number. They do a really good work and no one’s no one’s noticed, you know, only the local community here is noticing it. And they’re out there. And it is good work. It is good work. But we’re going to instead pay an editorial magazine to send a photographer from New York, down to Atlanta or down to somewhere else. Instead of hiring that photographer, it’s down there, of which there are many. Now maybe the work wouldn’t be the same quality, who knows one question where the stuff that’s coming from New York is to and that matter, function, but those are the people the people that aren’t being seen the people that don’t haven’t had their voice really seen in this upper level industry. But you know, we work at the levels we end up at the cream does rise to the top, something I discovered accidentally when I when we started this and it was my goal was always to be a better printer and to be a better photographer, and then accidentally ended up rubbing shoulders with almost a list of everybody you’d ever want to rub shoulders with was not the goal. The goal was underground punk shows with we cameras and long hair, I had hair and long hair. And that was where we started in a gorilla education, dark rooms. And then you end up at Paris photo with the most famous Russian photographer of all time talking to your friend. And you don’t know how that happened, because that was not your that was not why you were trying to be there. And I think a lot of people it is their goal to be theirs. I think we should respect those guys who are still there doing what, where we started. And I think you started in a similar spot in a similar concept. And they’re there more than ever.

Matthew Dols 1:22:08
My first paid photo assignment ever. I was let’s see, to talk to two years out of undergrad. And the Washington city paper hired me to go take the pictures of the making of porn film being done illegally in the District of Columbia because it was against law to make pornography in Washington DC proper, but you could do it in Virginia legally or Maryland legally, but you couldn’t do it in DC. So I had to go and somehow figure out a way to tastefully have photograph of making a porn film for a family publication. So that’s my first paid photo assignment ever. Where’s that photo book? You know? What? Yeah, it’s I’ve got a little archive of stuff. Yeah,

Andrew Fedynak 1:22:54
no, there was a woman who did that a few years back and got all the press and I can’t remember her name. It will come back to me. I apologize. But somebody I should remember. I know personally, but and they had done that they went into into the valley in Los Angeles. And but it was how do you photograph this from the right, they took a very fine art documentary approach to the background of pornography for this editorial. And some images were better than others. That’s an editing maybe opinion. I don’t know how long the axis was. That’s one of the issues with something like that. You never get long form time. I always am a fan of long form documentary. embedding. time you spend time with the people that’s my background, like Joe Riga is embedding and in my own work and not helicoptering in the wrong terms. That’s a wrong phrase. Not having a limited time. But that is how short form article works. It isn’t limited time. There’s not an infinite budget. So I mean, it is what it is, you know what I mean

Matthew Dols 1:23:52
parachuting in I think it was a parachuting in Yes. You helicopter

Andrew Fedynak 1:23:55
parents helicopter and people parachute in, right? Yes. Yes, my helicopter has hit a mountain and burned and falling apart in time. So alright.

Matthew Dols 1:24:07
last little bit, any advice for the next generation or, let’s do it specifically for you. Advice for anybody who’s looking for a publisher,

Andrew Fedynak 1:24:17
you’re looking for a publisher, you know, try to meet them in person try to get in front of them. That’s important work. You know, that’s important to get in front of that publisher and in front of him to break bread and to get to know them and it might take time and you know, just because you think your projects done it might not be we’ve sent projects back and funded the continuing shooting while we were designing them and things like that pick up shoots is what we call them. The cinema is a similar function. I applied it reverse apply to two photo books.

Matthew Dols 1:24:48
Where do you really meet the people? Where do you live?

Andrew Fedynak 1:24:51
I mean, you just gotta have hope that you want this book to be made. But don’t get caught into one of these pay a lot of money scams, it might end up costing some Money you should be putting maybe something for or not depending on the publisher. But at the same function, you know, do it because you want to do it not because you think you need a book to complete a hole in yourself or to complete hole in your resume, or to complete some mental milestone, you’ve got to do it because you think the work needs to be seen in this format, and then be open to ideas. Often books can fully designed to me, we don’t like that, and I want to redesign it. I won’t even take a price here if it does that. But like usually 99.9% there’s that one 0.01% coming up, because the guys, that couple that did that project happen to design in the same Wabi Sabi synesthetic design. And that does fit the companies eat those coincidence, coincidence, play ventually you roll the eyes, right. But you know, don’t always have it fully designed, be open to ideas, be open to things and interpretations and understand that you probably you’re not your own best sequencer designer or editor, you’re probably not your own best printer either. You probably only your own best photographer, because of your eye, and what you choose to make and the decisions, you make many infinite decisions in photography. And some people can play a little bit in all of it, I have a tendency to play a little bit in all of it. But you know, videography is very big, weak world weak point, in my own background, I’m not gonna I’m not I’m nowhere near the best filming video person as my ex or some of my former friends, my old editor or any of them, Hey, you know, miles beyond where I’ll ever be, you know, but you know, some of them can’t figure out how to sequence a book to save their life, you know, and that comes really naturally patterns and things like that. So know where your strengths, your weaknesses are be open to interpretation be open to waiting in time, he might be 15 years, you know, 20 years after you finish the project. I’m trying to make a hardcover, one of my personal bodies of work our guy lane, which we did is a booklet version way back in the day, kind of a zoom booklet, before his guitar press. And I don’t know if it’s probably not going to be as guitar press books is gonna be like my book. But we’ve been talking about doing this hardcover for a decade. You know, it’s a dated project now, like, you know, and it’s become a vintage project in the visual imagery to like, which is absolutely Whoa, kind of a hilarious thought that I’ve talked to the people who are in the book, and it’s like, you know, how much the world has changed just in that, you know, it’s actually about 11 years ago, my time we print the book and we 12 years but, but don’t be Don’t be afraid of waiting and just wait the long game, you know, you never know, you know? Do it for the love. You know, it’s all about the love and what we do,

Matthew Dols 1:27:55
indeed. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.