This series features interviews with independent photobook publishers. This month’s interview is with Miss Rosen of Miss Rosen Editions.
New York State of Mind by Martha Cooper
Don’t Take Pictures: How would you describe Miss Rosen Editions to someone who has never seen your books?
Miss Rosen: Miss Rosen Editions is an imprint dedicated to contemporary art and culture born on the streets of New York City from 1970s through the present. Whether spotlighting graffiti writers, Hip Hop artists, or street photographers, these books were created to preserve old-school legacies while cultivating exciting new talents in the fields of art, dance, fashion, film, literature, music, and photography
DTP: What series of events led you to start your own publishing house?
MR: In 2003-04, I worked as Project Manager for Peter Sutherland’s Autograf: New York City’s Graffiti Writers (powerHouse Books), wherein I collaborated on all aspects of the editorial, art direction, production, marketing, publicity, and promotions for the book. I loved every aspect of it—from collaborating with the author to working with the writers themselves to ensure the book sold out its first printing of 7,500 copies in less than five months.
I realized that nothing that gave me greater pleasure than to work with an author to see a book through from start to finish. At that point in my career, making books was the most exciting thing I could imagine. Fifteen years later, it still is. While the ‘00s were a boon for illustrated book publishing, I didn’t see many titles reflecting my world and wanted to create a platform to elevate street culture to the realms of fine art.
Wild Style The Sampler by Charlie Ahearn
DTP: How do you determine what might make a good photo book?
MR: Good is arbitrary, and I tend to avoid it in the discussion of art. There are things that I find tremendously appealing in terms of the subject, style, art direction, design, and production that might not resonate with the casual book buyer or expert alike.
Art meets us where we are, and that’s what makes it so extraordinary. It is a fixed object, never changing and yet it has the ability to transcend time and space, providing new insights and connections as experience shapes the way we age. There are books I have thought brilliant than no longer engage me as they once did, while there are others that I didn’t connect with until years after the fact. Where I once might have bemoaned the weight of the paper, the choice of four-color ink instead of duotone, the photo sequencing or format, I found no longer mattered when I sat with the book and understood what I was really looking at.
All of this is to say good is not a static concept and does not need to be defined by anyone other than the person with whom it is engaged, with the caveat that opinions are like the weather. Books, in and of themselves, are reliquaries of soul. What matters most is that they are used, cherished, and preserved.
We Are Experienced by Danielle Levitt
DTP: Have there been any books that have been particularly rewarding to produce or that you felt a special kinship with?
MR: Yes, Autograf, because I had the opportunity to collaborate with so many people featured in the book on the publicity and promotions campaign. Sadly, five of the 53 people in the book have since died, one quite recently of COVID-19. Like many of the books that I published, the book was a marker of its time, a portrait of an Old York that no longer exists.
I also feel deeply connected with Martha Cooper’s New York State of Mind, which took root one Christmas when Marty gave me a copy of a 1980 calendar she produced. It featured “weather” photographs she made in the 1970s while working as a staff photographer at The New York Post, and as I paged through it I felt a powerful sense of déjà vu. Did we have this calendar on the refrigerator when I was a kid—or was Marty so masterful at capturing exactly how New York felt at that time that these pictures occurred to me as recovered memories from my childhood?
DTP: What was one of the most challenging books that you have published and why?
MR: Without a doubt: Vandal Squad: Inside the New York Transit Police Department, 1984–2004 by Joseph Rivera. I was in over my head with this project from the start. I had been working with a graffiti writer who dropped out of the project early on, and I didn’t have the knowledge to do the culture the justice it deserved. While I was determined to fact check the author’s stories with the graffiti writers mentioned in the book, I wasn’t yet a journalist and didn’t know how to properly research and report stories. If I had more skills at the time, I would have delved deeper into the historical and political issues concerning the relationship between the New York Police Department and graffiti writers to provide deeper context for the stories the author shared in the book.
That said, I organized the first ever public discussion between former NYPD Vandal Squad cops and former graffiti writers for a standing-room only event that was one of the most intense and dynamic events I ever produced—thanks in great part to formidable energy and expertise of Alan Ket and Lt. SA Steven Mona.
Belgrade Belongs to Me by Boogie
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?
MR: Do they want to start a second career as an author? That’s the real question at hand. Being an author and being a photographer are two entirely different things. An author doesn’t just make a book (a massive task unto itself), but is also charged with organizing the marketing, publicity, promotions, and sales of the book.
As an author, a photographer must be a collaborator, willing to both lead with their vision and known when to fall back and allow those who understand the demands of the market to help them shape their product to suit the needs of the publishing house. Both sides of this equation involve everything from cover design, book title, essays, captions, photo edit, sequencing, art direction, format, trim size, paper weight, separations, and printing to developing the author’s brand identity, press coverage, book signings, talks, exhibitions, and other special events that will help generate sales opportunities. It’s easily a two-year process from the time you sign the contract to the moment its in the warehouse, ready to be sold. It doesn’t pay well, either—but no one ever got into art books to get rich.
If that sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. But not every publisher will allow authors to be this involved with their books—some will take their work and make what they want, with no input from the author as per the terms of their contract. I’ve witnessed joy and heartbreak alike from authors who did or did not understand with whom they were doing business. Many people simply take any offer they can get—which is not unlike marrying someone just because they ask.
Photographers who want to make a book would benefit from making sure they have cultivated a market for their work because in an industry with slim profits, money talks. Being able to deliver not only the work but the sales empowers you to make the book you want, when you want, and with who you want so that the book serves whatever purpose you need, whether that is power, fame, status community, activism, or legacy. Bon chance!
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