This series features interviews with independent photobook publishers. This month’s interview is with Grzegorz Kosmala of Blow Up Press. 

Don’t Take Pictures: How would you describe Blow Up Press to someone who has never seen your books?

Grzegorz Kosmala: Once, during Fiebre Photobook Festival in Madrid, we welcomed people who stopped by our table saying: “Welcome to the most depressing and darkest table. Only serious stuff here: loneliness, melancholy, addiction, lost and death…” And although we were joking, it is somehow the best description of BLOW UP PRESS because we like thoughts provoking topics. Our motto is When the story matters and we really try to follow it in all our books. We try to show the contemporary world and man in all its glory and infamy. No tricks, just how it is.

DTP: What series of events led you to start your own publishing house?

GK: Everything started in 2012 when I left my previous job at a public relations agency. One of the projects I was responsible for was a nationwide press photography contest. I met then a lot of fantastic people who became undeserved victims of crisis in printing media. So, together with Aneta, my girlfriend and also very gifted designer, we decided to create something where they could still publish their photographs. It is how we established BLOW UP PRESS with online monthly doc! photo magazine, dedicated to documentary projects. We launched its first issue on July 9, 2012. In 2016, the magazine became a paper-based quarterly, followed by books one year later. Today, books are our main scope of interest with the magazine coming back in July after one-year break needed to refresh its idea. So, one could say that we are somehow against the market: when media focus on the internet, we are leaving it. But for us it is a natural path, natural development of our thinking about photography and how it should be presented: on paper.

DTP: How do you find photographers that you want to work with and how do you determine what might make a good photo book?

GK: Well, we don’t have any special policy in this. Whether we propose to someone to publish a book or someone proposes this to us, we must be enchanted by the project. There is no further discussion without it. We choose projects very carefully because we want to be recognizable. And one can say that our books are very curative. So, if you would offer us a book with pictures of funny cats, which would certainly be the best seller, judging from the number of likes of such pictures on social media, we would refuse. But if the same photos would tell us about a cat's family from the perspective of several generations, with its internal and external relations, which would put this story in the wider context of society, no matter feline or human, then we would be very interested in such a project, because there is a story behind it. 

DTP: Have there been any books that have been particularly rewarding to produce or that you felt a special kinship with?

GK: I will always remember our first book, 9 Gates of No Return by Agata Grzybowska. Not just because it is our first one, but also because of the noise it created. The book is about people who decided to live in total separation from the society in the most remote area of Poland, Bieszczady Mountains. This region has a special attention and perception among Poles. We perceive it as a place of total freedom, where the wild nature dictates you how to live. We launched this book in a very good moment as HBO Poland just released the second season of its TV series Wataha, talking about border guards serving there. People were so crazy about the book that we sold its Polish edition within one month. Besides, the book also won a number of international awards and in Poland it obtained the double status of the best photographic publication of the year.

DTP: What are some forthcoming titles are you particularly excited about?

GK: We are currently working on three books plus we also have a competition which will result with another one. The most exciting is the latter one because I have no idea what it will be. Really. We are still waiting for the jurors’ judgment. I hope to see their short list at the turn of March. However, if focus on the other new books, it is difficult to decide. Each is different and each provides different kind of excitement. For example, the book by Polish artistic duo, Mateusz Sarełło and Marta Zgierska, titled Garden, will discuss relation between two lovers. He just finished very destructive relationship with another woman and his new partner tries to find her place in his inner landscape. Everything is shown on collages built from black and white pictures of withered bouquets in which the flowers are replaced with fragments of the body. Very symbolic, beautiful and personal artwork. Then we have a book by Italian photographer Karl Mancini, Ni Una Menos, describing violence against women in macho oriented cultures of the South America but also in other countries. Karl investigates this issue for years and has collected enormous amount of evidence and shocking stories of women fighting for justice and because of this, it will be a challenge to make this book. And the third book, Mondfinsternis by French photographer Damien Daufresne, will be a metaphorical and poetic tale about life of a little girl in the repetitive shades of reality, about life measured by the titled eclipses of the moon. A very personal book combining photographs, paintings and graphics.

DTP: What was one of the most challenging books that you have published and why?

GK: To Mancini’s book we have one which was a real challenge—Death Landscapes by Hubert Humka. It talks about how past, dramatic events impact our perception of a place. In the book, which is based on archive materials taken from different archives like from police or prosecutors but also from other books, Hubert describes in detail 13 stories that happened in several European countries between 1916 and 2015. All stories have one thing in common—death. Different deaths: execution, suicide, mass suicide, terrorist attack, murder, serial murder, revenge or battle. To discuss them, he visited all 13 locations and photographed them again exactly at the anniversary dates of the events from the book. So, as you see, it was also logistically challenging publication. We also needed permissions for publication from the institutions mentioned before because some of the documents were never published before. This includes a diary of one of Polish serial killers written to help police understand how serial killers think, then we also have a police report being a centimeter by centimeter description of a place where police discovered bodies of three women. The book includes lots of written materials that had to be translated to English. So, we hired three translators working simultaneously for two months: one was responsible for the diary, the second for the police report I mentioned, and the third one for the rest. They did fantastic job that together with photographs and stories created unforgettable and thoughts provoking book. All together took three years. And then next seven months to design the book which was a challenge too because each story was different, based on different materials, described from different perspective—witness, killer or victim—and all of these had to be followed in the book layout. Fortunately, Aneta Kowalczyk, who designed Death Landscapes as well as other our books, likes such challenges. Dedication of all people involved in this project resulted with something you don’t see so often in bookstores. A real masterpiece.

DTP: It seems that an increasing number of photographers, at all stages of their careers, are looking to publish a book. What should photographers think about before they embark on the book process?

GK: There are two things from my perspective. They should ask themselves if their project is good for the book. You see, there are projects that work much better and have stronger voice in shorter version, published either in the magazine or as a zine. Adding more pictures just to publish a book from this material, will only weaken and blur its meaning. When creating a book, you have to follow different editing rules than by publishing it in a magazine or on a website, because here you have completely different narration. And it may turn out that you have thousands of pictures from which you can build a great photo report, but you don’t have enough material for the photobook. Understanding this is a starting point to have a good book. The second thing is to be open for external collaborators like editors and designers. They don’t play against you or your project. They want to do their job as good as you want to make good photographs, so let them do this.

Visit the Blow Up Press website to learn more about their books.