Lumiere Press

Michael Torosian

       

     A while back, I mentioned Gerhard Steidl of Gottingen who is regarded as one of the top printers of photography books. Recently I discovered that he has a competitor, Michael Torosian, the founder in 1986 of Lumiere Press which is located in Toronto. 

     Mr. Torosian is the subject of an article in a series produced by the Globe and Mail. The series is called “Applause Please” and it profiles those who have made artistic and cultural contributions, but remain generally unacknowledged. The article is: “Michael Torosian: When it Comes to Lumiere Press’s Books, ‘Everything is Bespoke. Nothing is off the Rack,’ “ by Brad Wheeler, G&M, April 5, 2018. If you read on, I think you will agree that he and Lumiere Press deserve to be better-known.

(from The Ballad of Soames Bantry...)

    

     The son of a welder from Fort Erie, Torosian taught himself all of the skills required to produce finely-crafted books. Enormous effort is expended on research as well, even though only a small number of books are printed. They won’t be found at your local Indigo stores - even the ones in Toronto. One of his first books  -  Edward Weston: Dedicated to Simplicity - is about a photographer, as is his newest one - The Ballad of Soames Bantry: And Other Stories From the Fabled Life and New York Years of Photographer, Painter and Poet Saul Leiter.

   If you wish to purchase The Ballad… you should visit the Lumiere Press site which you should look at in any case. You will get an appreciation for how much work goes into such a production and learn that Lumiere’s purpose is as stated here: “Over the years it has been our mission and pleasure to present original interviews, primary source documentation, thoughtful essays and astutely selected images, with elegance and craftsmanship, as our contribution to the dialogue on the art of photography and the art of the book.”

    The first fifty copies of the book have been purchased by the Howard Greenberg Gallery and if you are interested in photography books, you should go to their site as well. In addition, you will find a good essay about Saul Leiter. 

    If you wish to actually hold and look at one of his books, here in London you will find these two up at Western University: Toronto Suite: An Exhibition of Portraits of the the Artists: Photographs and Interviews, 1989, 79 pp. (The London Public Library also has a copy).

Harlem: Gordon Parks: The Artist’s Annotations on a City Revisited in Two Classic Photographic Essays, 1997

    The Toronto Public Library has a copy of Torosian’s book about the photographer Frederick Sommer and ultimately the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto will be the place to visit since they have acquired the Lumiere archives.

Sources: 

For another article about Torosian see: "Slow Books: The Art of Bookmaking at Toronto’s Lumiere," By Shawn Micallef, The Toronto Star, Oct. 17, 2015.

In March 2018 the Alcuin Society awarded Torosian first prize for "The Best Designed Canadian Book" in the Limited Editions category (for the year 2017). See here.

The information about Steidl books is found (oddly enough) in my post about Gas Stations.