The Secrets of Self Publishing with Musuk Nolte

Musuk Nolte is a Peruvian Mexican photographer and editor whose work mixes documentary and artistic approaches. He is founder of Kwy Ediciones, an independent photo book publisher for Latin American authors. His projects have been supported by the National Geographic Society, World Press Photo, and Magnum Foundation, among others.

HM: Throughout your career, have you had effective mentors? How did they help you?

MN: I don’t have a mentor exactly, I have a supportive group of friends. We edit together and talk about everything from how much to charge for a job to how to apply for opportunities. That’s a big source of support and I think it has to do with my generation. You have colleagues who also live in Latin America, who you share a friendship with, who are working on similar issues, and there’s a constant exchange and collaboration between you.

HM: How has being part of that type of community helped you to grow as a photographer?

MN: It’s been crucial. Participating in the Latin American gatherings that took place over the last decade was extremely important. That’s where we could learn about what was being done, issues that were developing, technical and team practices. That contributed to the professionalization of the discipline. “20 Photographers” had a big impact as an incubator for Latin American photography – it brought together more than 100 photographers, from people just starting out to mid level to tutors, who would meet for a week in a space for collective creation. I’d say that over half the people who are now producing very interesting, committed work, who are having visibility in the media, got a big boost from that space.

HM: What is it that happens in those spaces that is so valuable?

MN: On the one hand, simply meeting each other. Ten years ago I didn't know what was being done in Colombia or Chile. Information was very scarce. On the other hand, I taught at two “20 Photographers” workshops in Bolivia and Guatemala, and the methodology was very effective. I was a tutor for two young men at an intermediate level of their career. We worked on the creation of a project, and each day they’d go to an editor to show the progress they’d made. In parallel, there were workshops at night: how to apply for a Nat Geo grant, how to make a mock of a book, how to fly a drone. People came out of that week deeply motivated, not just from getting so much useful information, but also on an emotional level – from making connections with others, and from having people show interest in a story that perhaps they felt had not been heard. Those spaces have been very purposeful in the context of Latin American photography.

HM: How did you start publishing photo books?

MN: The publisher we started, Kwy Ediciones, is 12 years old. At that time there was an important movement in the photo book landscape, but one that was taking shape more in Europe. In Latin America, there were very few independent publishers of photography. Starting a publisher was a response to the need and desire to be able to self-publish our projects. If something doesn't exist, we have to figure out how to do it, right? So without any prior knowledge, we started learning to make books. I found it very complex and difficult to finance, but at the same time, I really liked the work of editing.

The first book we published was a project by Rodrigo Abd, The Afghan Camera. Rodrigo was very generous in allowing us to do a first-book experiment with the project. Based on that experience, my partner Fernando Fujimoto (another Peruvian photographer) and I started the publisher. We began to see what projects interested us.

HM: What kind of projects were you looking for? What did you want to highlight?

MN: Initially, we thought we were going to focus strictly on documentary photography. Given the lack of publishers at that time, we knew that what interested us was Latin American photography.

Some possibilities emerged for projects by photographers of my own generation, friends. For example, I participated in a World Press Photo masterclass in Mexico, where I met Juanita Escobar and reconnected with Yael Martínez. We talked about long-term projects they were working on that could potentially become books. That's how we published Juanita’s book Llano, then her book Orinoco, and that's when we started the conversation with Yael Martínez about publishing The House That Bleeds. From there, the trajectory began to take shape and we gained some visibility in the media.

I would say that the publisher doesn't work like a business, in the sense that we don’t choose a project because we think it will sell a lot or generate a profit. We publish a project because we think it's worthwhile, interesting, relevant, there's a commitment to the story, or sometimes because of the social impact it can generate. The book making process is tedious, so you have to feel strongly about it and have a good relationship with the author.

HM: Are there characteristics you always look for in photos or projects as an editor? What makes a project feel worth it?

MN: There’s an intuitive aspect where you feel excitement when you see a project. Sometimes you have this experience where someone is showing you work and it sparks an emotion and you feel compelled to start sequencing it, creating a structure for it. It’s also about taste, but I think emotion is an important and fundamental indicator.

On the other hand, there’s an aspect of friendship, of knowing how much time a colleague has dedicated to a project or how it’s related to their personal life, as in the case of Yael or Juanita. Those are first-person stories in a way – they deal with wider problems but they’re from a very personal perspective. Finally, you need to feel like you can contribute to the project. There are fascinating projects that are very well done, but where I as an editor feel that I don't have the resources to propose something.

HM: Intuition is not to be underestimated.

MN: Definitely not. In fact, a very curious thing happened to me that had never happened to me before. In a portfolio review at a festival in Mexico, someone showed me a project and after maybe five seconds I asked him if he wanted to make a book, because I instantly felt that there was something very powerful there, something I felt connected to. But I think it also has to do with oneself as a person. What’s going through your head, what experiences have you been through? I don’t feel it’s that pragmatic. There’s a relationship where intuition and emotional connections generate this impulse, and you decide.

HM: You touched on another important point as well, which is personal projects. So often it’s the personal, long-term projects that are the source of the most complex and moving work.

MN: Yes, and it is precisely personal projects, long-term ones, that are the most difficult to edit. Those are also the projects where authors feel they need someone to collaborate with. In many of the projects we’ve edited, there was a very extensive archive that showed an evolution in the approach to photographing and growth in the visual language. It was important that the author have an outside view to see what images are really telling the story, beyond the images they might have a subjective relationship with. You look for that middle ground. Those are precisely the projects that seem the most interesting and exciting to me.

HM: Do you always get the finished project, or are you ever mentoring a photographer while it’s in progress? For example, encouraging somebody to explore different directions while they're doing the project?

MN: Most of the time it’s projects that are almost finished. But when you talk about making a book, you put possibilities on the table – such as not only making new photographs, but revisiting your archive and considering things you’d rejected, things you photographed that you thought were not part of the project. In other words, the collaboration is not restricted to creating the book itself, it’s also about the project process. In some cases, once you’re designing the book, you realize that perhaps it would be interesting to have a portrait here, and there's a chance to do it. Or maybe you propose that someone write something. So the book is the process of conceptualizing what it is that the subject must communicate – considering the available material, obviously, but also things that don't exist yet, like a text, a poem, or an image that hasn't been made. As you talk more about the project, there are often images that remain pending that can be done along the way.

HM: What is the process like of collaborating on the concept and design of a photo book?

MN: When I see a project that I think could be a book, I start imagining how it could look, making image associations, and visualizing an object. That experience is where it begins, of having an imaginative sense of its potential book form. In most publishing projects I play the role of editorial director and editor. As editorial director I organize the work team and coordinate between the author, the designer, the writers of the text, and a printing press – everything involved in making the book from the concept to the printed object. As editor, it's more of a direct collaboration with the author, selecting the material and organizing it. The entire design phase is done collaboratively with a designer, but sometimes the sequence itself implicitly already has a design.

For example, last year we published a book by César Rodríguez, a Mexican photographer. It was one of those projects where there was a huge amount of material. César, without exaggeration, sent me five or six thousand images, almost all as raw material. He had a lot of approaches and different situations. The stories all came from the same region, and they all had the same problem at their root, but they had very different dynamics. So we worked with César to find a way to organize it, and we decided to make booklets that can be viewed independently, but that are in dialogue with each other. We separated the images that had more to do with the community, and in the front we put a booklet where the violence was a little more evident, the weapons, the dynamics of poppy cultivation. In a case like that, there’s already a concept, and the designer takes it from its starting point and begins to process it and rethink it. It’s a very collaborative process, but it's not always done the same way.

Cesar Rodriguez’s Montaña Roja, published by Kwy Ediciones.

HM: How would you describe your style when sequencing photos, if you feel like you have one?

MN: That’s a very interesting and complex question, because you implicitly ask it when you’re editing. You try to have an internal dialogue about why you're putting one thing next to another. I think it initially has to do with intuition. There is a formal question of associating two images and seeing how they talk to each other, but in a way there’s also a question of defining a collective style, on some level, as a Latin American, where we feel that the images form part of a whole. How do they connect with each other? Do they have the potential to generate sensations through metaphors, allegories, equivalences?

It’s similar to how poetry works. There may be no logical relationship, but suddenly two words, because of their sound or because their meaning is complementary or opposing or divergent, end up generating a third idea. In the same way, how can these two images, which were created in different situations, perhaps different years, generate a third image when they talk to each other?

There’s also something I always think about, which is how the last image stays with you when you turn the page. You’re in a different visual space, but there's a memory of what you just saw, like when you’re watching a sequence in a movie. Maybe it's obvious, but there’s a cinematic element that’s very present. There’s a sequence and everything has a logic.

HM: Could you talk about your approach to weaving in texts and other elements to contextualize photographs?

MN: I aim for the images and texts to have autonomy. In other words, the images should stand on their own without the need for text to understand them. But a lot of context can get lost. The texts are secondary – like a legend that gives more explanation to what you're seeing. But I think the use of texts has to do with interest and taste as well as poetry, precisely because of this possibility of establishing relationships that are not so direct. So many of our books have poems that speak directly to a problem or texts that were written in the past. The writer might be far away in terms of time, but their words allow you to say what you want to say. We want the texts to accompany you, but not take the place of the visual reading.

HM: What advice do you have for photographers who want to create a book?

MN: I think the most important thing is knowing when a project is ready to become a book – and understanding that not all projects have to become books. It’s not the best decision to force something into a book only because of a subjective desire that has nothing to do with the project itself.

So first, decide if a project really has the potential to be a book. If it does, don’t rush it. Don’t let yourself be carried away by the anxiety – which I recognize in myself sometimes – of wanting to put something out before it’s ready.

I also think self-publishing is very important. It’s difficult for an established publisher with a history to take on a project simply because it’s very good. There’s always a distinct reading, a prior contact, a specific interest. In my experience of self-publishing my work – not in the sense that I publish it without collaborators on the sequence and the design, but rather that I’m responsible for supervising the processes and learning how to do things – I think taking that route is very good advice for those who want to make a first book.

Seeing what's being done is important, too. If you go to fairs you see there are movements that fluctuate. Suddenly you see that one year there are a lot of books about stones or a lot of books about birds, and that's an interesting learning experience. You see trends or fashions and you think about how you relate to that, if you want to follow that current or go against it.

The last thing I would also say is that photo books should not necessarily be designed for this bubble, but rather they should be objects of communication geared towards a wide and diverse audience. Because if we don't do that, the project stays in an echo chamber which ends up being very limited.

Musuk Nolte’s photo book Sombra de Isla.

HM: For someone who’s not sure where to start when it comes to finding the right collaborators, what would you recommend? How do you find people who can be your allies in making your book?

MN: I think it's complicated because it’s not like there's a specific place where you can go to find a bunch of people who can help. My advice would be to try to work with someone you have an existing relationship with, someone you know. Maybe that person hasn’t made any books yet, but they design well; maybe on that project they want to start and learn to do it along the way. I feel like something much more unique can come out of that, with a different personality from the things that already exist. So my advice is to turn to friends or other people you trust. That will also make it more feasible to do a project. If you choose a designer because they’ve already done a lot of books and gained recognition, the cost of that person might make the project less viable.

HM: This is great advice.

MN: Yes, and most of all, make mocks. That’s very important to the process. You can make mocks on a shoestring budget, with a house printer, black and white, photocopies, scissors, paper, erasers, whatever you have. That’s the most effective way to learn to sequence, to edit. A good suggestion is to print the photos and stick them in a notebook, so you have the flexibility to see how they work together as you turn the page, in a slightly longer sequence. That process generates good ideas in my experience.

Geographies of Water, published by Kwy Ediciones.

HM: What advice would you have for photographers editing their portfolio, based on your experience and that of photographers you know?

MN: I always ask myself that. You often feel unsure about what to leave out, what to include. I’ve realized a lot of the time, my decisions have been based on the expectations I think they have of me. For example, if I'm pitching a story to a magazine, I’m imagining the photos I've seen in this magazine before, or how the person seeing them would react. But sometimes that short circuits what you really believe is important to share. So I think it’s important to feel secure and confident in the sequence, and not think too much about who the interlocutor is, but rather that in this group of images, I can defend what I have to say very well. And yes, maybe this time the prize or the magazine doesn't want it, but there's going to be someone who does value that way of articulating the project.

Having reviewed applications and portfolios, another important point is that sometimes we try to validate our work by showing the same things as other people in the industry. For example, when I worked for a newspaper, you had to have the wide angle, the tight angle, a background photo, a close-up of the character. There were formulas you had to use to satisfy a preconceived notion. But in our context, where there are so many people photographing and a lot of implicit competition, it’s also important to understand what our role is, our voice, our uniqueness that can make the difference. How can I, as an individual, show this story or this situation in a way that no one else could? I feel that's where we should defend our value, regardless of whether it works or doesn't work. Sooner or later your conviction and the merit of the story is going to pay off somehow.

HM: When it finds a home, it will be the right one.

MN: Exactly.

HM: What would you share with photographers about how to sustain a career and support yourself as a photographer in this difficult industry?

MN: I’m walking that tightrope myself now, trying to maintain an equilibrium. I think that focusing on a particular idea or story and developing a long-term project is always a good suggestion. It’s also beneficial to those you’re collaborating with, whose story you’re telling, because you establish a relationship of friendship, of trust, that opens doors. In that process you also come to understand the story better. Finally, if you’re looking for a grant, an award, or funding, that gets noticed. Committed and long-term work is highly valued. When you have conviction and a subject, at some point there's going to be an opportunity that will reward the time you put in.

Although they’re limited and very competitive, I think grants and other funding sources create interesting possibilities. Unlike fighting to make pitches and sell stories and have a publication give an assignment for a day or two, that has freed me up a little to focus and photograph more of the everyday life of stories.

HM: So you have space to reflect, instead of always reacting to what's happening right now.

MN: Exactly. It's part of the nature of the industry – they send you on a three, four day assignment and there's an expectation that you'll make a story. Sometimes you can do it, sometimes situations offer you a lot of images, but sometimes nothing happens, right? So you have to find a way to turn the story around, and that also means a lot of stress and pressure. Maybe that story doesn't work out. Then comes the insecurity that you're not doing it right or they’re not going to call you again. Those are experiences everyone ends up having at some point. But if I had to give advice, try to think about it differently. Find a story you feel drawn to, sucked in by, that you feel conviction of purpose about, and go deep into that.

HM:That's also often where your unique visual language develops the most.

MN: Yes, and sometimes for very practical reasons – if you keep going back to a place, you end up photographing the same things over and over. Maybe you feel it’s always talked about in the same way and you start finding other ways to represent it. With some of my projects, it was precisely in that experience of going back to the same story that I ended up finding a much more appropriate language for it.

HM: That's fascinating. What have you learned about how to make arguments and present your work effectively to get grants and that kind of support?

MN: I think it’s very important to talk about who you are, what moves you, why you’re working on this topic, what your relationship with it is. All those personal elements open the door to those who are reviewing the project. Then you can talk about the idea you want to pursue, but I find it more important to know who the person that’s asking for these resources is, because the things you’ve already done back you up. It may not be totally clear to me what you’re planning to do, but I trust that what you've done in the past has been worthwhile, or you have an important connection to your story.

I also think there’s an issue with how questions are formulated for applications, where you’re not sure if you should adhere to it or seek to differentiate yourself. Sometimes it ends up alienating you and you almost automatically respond with what they want to hear. But if we assume everyone is answering questions in the same way, the reviewers are going to look for uniqueness, someone who answers in a more authentic way. This goes back to why you in particular are going to approach this story in a special way. Perhaps something from your own life story has to do with that motivation. You have to say why you’re the best person to tell it.