Twenty-two limited-edition books in 34 years may not sound like an efficient time-to-product ratio for a publisher, but Michael Torosian does not measure success by arbitrary printing quotas. Rather, the fine-art photographer turned proprietor of the Toronto-based Lumiere Press sees printing as an extension of the photographic print. “Which is the original? The print or the book?” he muses in the introduction of Lumiere Press: Printer Savant & Other Stories. The run of 400 copies, typeset in W.A. Dwiggins’ Linotype Eldorado, are designed and hand-bound by the author.
I have been on Torosian’s mailing list for over two decades, and an admirer of the books he has created on photographers he deeply admires. Samples of the books he’s made of their work, as well as his own photographs, supplemented by the essays he’s written and reprinted by others, make this volume both readable and collectable.
Although I’ve written in the past about specific Lumiere Press books, I’ve not, until recently, talked to Torosian about his work. The recent creation of the Lumiere Press Archives at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, was a good excuse to learn more about this printer/photographer.
How do you define the title Printer Savant?
This was a title bestowed upon me the evening of my very first book launch. I was explaining to a guest how the books were made—that I had cast the type from molten lead, printed the sheets on a hand-cranked, hand-fed press, and bound the books entirely by hand. She was astonished at how complex and labor-intensive it all was and asked me where I had learned how to do all this stuff, assuming perhaps I’d gone to an industrial trade school. When I told her that I was self-taught, she said, “You must be a printer savant.”
I loved it. The implication that I had some kind of extraordinary ethereal native talent was delightful, but I also liked the clever turn of phrase. I thought it was so novel it ultimately found its way into the title of the newest book, which surveys my entire career.
And the term served as a contrapuntal device in the book’s narrative to understand the path of my education in the book arts—that my “savant-like” aptitude was actually the result of an array of factors—an obsessive devotion to learning; the aesthetic tools I brought with me from my background in the art of photography; and the experience of meeting and working with some of the most important artists of the 20th century.
I still like the idea of being called a “savant,” even though the reality is less dreamy and more the product of thousands of hours of intense work.
How did you become a printer, and how did you decide what to print?
I had my first one-man show as a photographer in 1974. I was deeply immersed in the artform. In those years exhibitions were few and far between, so it was primarily through books that I developed a mature understanding of the medium and found inspiration.
And I had two key revelations—because the reproductions in a book could retain the fidelity of the original photographic print and the structure of the book enabled the photographer to make a sophisticated statement through the selection and sequencing of images, the book in itself was a work of art. From that, I arrived at the conviction that the book was truly the medium of photography. The question: How could I pursue the book arts?
In 1976 I was working on a portfolio of prints that required some typesetting and printing, and I was introduced to a designer who offered to help me out. When I arrived at his home, he led me into the kitchen. The room was dominated by a Vandercook cylinder proofing press. He was hand-setting type and printing books. I thought you needed a factory to make books, and this guy was doing it in his kitchen.
This was my introduction to letterpress. But just as importantly, it was also my introduction to the ethos of the “fine press,” a philosophical perspective founded on the idea of the book not as the product of an editorial board and an array of industrial tradesmen, but as the expression of one person’s conceptualization, design and craftsmanship.
I was absolutely captivated by the craft. For the next 10 years I committed myself to an intense, personal education in the book arts. I studied design and typography and the history of the book. I acquired and learned how to operate an Intertype machine and a printing press and, for three years, I took night school classes in traditional book binding.
One of the great advantages of devoting a decade to this personal education is that it gave me the time to seriously consider what shape a publishing program should take. I was guided by my mantra that I wanted “to be part of the dialogue of my medium.” The heart of my mission became the examination of the artform through the biographies and philosophies of photographers who had inspired me.
There is such a perfection in what you do. How did this ingrain itself in your being?
I’m tempted to credit heredity for that. My father was a meticulous craftsman. He built the house I grew up in—by hand. And my mother was cut from the same cloth—very fastidious and well-organized.
In my book I quote Mies van der Rohe’s famous line, “God is in the details,” and I make the point that the allusion to the divine elevates the aspiration. The way we work is not just a matter of striving for perfection, it is an ethical imperative.
I take the position that every minute of every hour should be one of concentration and commitment. Whether I’m writing, or photographing, or gluing up a spine, it is all of a piece: I make no differentiation in the meaning of a task. It all has to be done, and done well.
It’s a way of living and learning and being.
Books obviously are not disappearing, but how do you viably preserve the species in the work you do?
I started out in the fine press world because the craft appealed to me. There is nothing more rewarding than to make something with your own two hands.
But in addition to the sheer pleasure of making books the way I do in my workshop, I soon discovered that I’d come upon a form of publishing art books that had a lot of merits.
When you look at the tidal wave of trade books that are produced every year, you realize it is so overwhelming that many books don’t have a chance of finding an audience or enduring. As Calvin Trillin once quipped, “The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.” A trade title is easily pushed out by the next thing coming down the assembly line.
In contrast, in the world of publishing I have my own unique bandwidth. Lumiere Press is the only fine press in the world devoted to the art of photography. The books stand apart. Private collectors and institutions have responded to the “object quality” and the art historical scholarship, and for 40 years I’ve sold out every edition. And because the books are not an ephemeral product, but are preserved and treasured and studied, the impact of each book is curiously much greater than books published in bigger numbers.
There are so many ways to make a good book. What is the line below which you will not descend as a bookmaker?
I can only answer this by inverting the equation and saying that there is no limit to what I would do in the pursuit of perfection. I’ve learned that perfection as an absolute is unattainable, but I think striving for it does possess a certain nobility.
The Lumiere Press Archives at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, are packed with the evidence of this striving—trial pages, prototype bindings, maquettes—a profusion of artifacts attesting to the compulsion to find a way of expressing in paper and ink the intellectual and creative substance of the project.
My assistants have sometimes wondered why we would devote weeks, sometimes months, to one small detail of the project, and my answer is always the same—everything I do is my legacy.
The plaque on the cover of the new book might look like something you’d knock off in one day’s work, but in fact it was the result of weeks of experimentation with an array of papers and ink formulations. The printing and trimming were very painstaking processes. As I say in the book, “Fanaticism and toil are de rigueur in this trade.”
Personally, there are the books I preserve and look through once (but will not sully), and books that I avidly read, and treat like any consumable. What category, or where in between, is your space?
Judging from the response over the years, I can see that there is a strata of collectors who consider Lumiere Press books in the same classification as “works on paper”—like woodcuts or lithographs—that is, works of art. And they are handled and savored in that spirit.
And there is also ample evidence that the books are carefully read. Multiple requests have come in from scholars working on theses and dissertations seeking permission to cite material. Additionally, the full text of a number of Lumiere Press titles has been reprinted in books issued by Yale University Press, the National Gallery of Canada, Steidl, and the University of Toronto Press—ample confirmation of their art historical value.
Critics routinely remark on how people visiting a museum walk through galleries of masterpieces and give each work no more than a few seconds consideration. I’ve seen people go through my books, and as they realize that it is not the typical kind of book they are accustomed to, they begin to savor the presence of the materials, the architectonic forms of the lead type, the sculptural aura of the letterpress printing.
We’ll just say the books are their own species.
What does your and Lumiere Press’ future have in store?
For the past 40 years, the day after I finished a book, I started work on the next book.
I’ve now almost finished work in the bindery on the latest book. However, rather than plunging into the next thing, I want to pause for a minute to consider the future.
With the passing of the years I’ve become more aware of the physical demands of the craft. The tools and machinery and lead are pretty hefty. There are days when it feels like nothing in the shop weighs less than an anvil.
In spite of that, I’d like to think I’ve got it in me to work until I’m 80, which means I’ve got 10 years to go. However, because the books have become progressively more ambitious, it now take two to three years to execute a project. What this all means is that in all probability I have three books in me.
So the issue occupying my mind is what are the three books—potentially the “last three books”—that are the most meaningful to me? What do I have to say? What do I want to discover?
I want to keep going because I want to keep learning, and there is a phenomenon that replicates itself with every project. After months and months of labor, the workshop is full of components—specimen pages, galleys, press sheets, trial bindings—and one day, this mass of stuff congeals into a recognizable book for the first time, the physical manifestation of an intellectual concept. It is gratifying. It is exhilarating. It is addictive. It pushes me forward.